101.4 Degrees

Since I've been struggling to rid my body of an annoying head and chest cold, I've been watching a lot of skating and thinking. If this doesn't make sense, remember, I've been running a fever. Sometimes you and your coach are on two different pages. You see yourself as being able to at least attempt to move on and try harder things. Your coach sees your highest jump as being a waltz jump. Different pages. You sit back and wonder why you aren't working on new elements and why your entire lesson consists of you doing crossovers. 40 minutes of crossovers. By the time your lesson is over, your legs are jello and you want a drink. Unfortunately, it's 8:30am. You remember being able to perform elements without thinking about it, and if you don't think about it, you can still do it. Then you think about it. If someone video taped you at that moment, you would resemble an animal attempting to run at top speed on ice. You know how it's going to end and no, it's not a pretty picture. You watch a local competition and think, "I should have done this competition". So the next year, you sign up. Who else signs up? That skater who just left an international ice show. Watching her Russian splits, illusions and easy double jumps, you wonder if you're being punked and where Ashton Kutcher and cameras are hiding. Mentally you have choreographed your program and it contains elements you CAN do. Your coach doesn't agree and that opening jump combination of salchow/loop becomes a waltz jump. This is followed by crossovers, a lot of crossovers into another waltz jump. You insist that some of what you mentally choreographed should stay, but when you try to show your coach, it looks as though you've never been on ice before and you lose that battle. So you make plans and a tentative schedule for upcoming months, but freestyle sessions are canceled for hockey and coaches move on because you're not improving fast enough. You begin to wonder if you're actually enjoying skating any longer. You are, you just wish you were improving faster. Such is the life of an adult skater. To those who are reading, this is not necessarily me; this is all adult skaters. We work really hard to master the elements. We do not get the respect we should. Our events are eliminated from competitions, or our competitions are dropped all together. We are occasionally treated like 5th class citizens at rinks, yet we expected to always volunteer at events. We enjoy volunteering, but our main purpose for being at the rink is to skate. Wishing the best to those going to Regional and National. I hope to be with you next year. However, if you ARE that skater who just left the international ice show, please, do NOT be in my group! I've already experienced that at my first USFSA competition and it wasn't fun.