Surprisingly, I was calm the day before the test. I did a lot of visualization exercises and kept envisioning my test papers with "Pass" circled on the forms. The morning of the test, I was a bundle of nerves but closed my eyes and ran through the entire test in my mind. When I opened my eyes, I was calm and confident.
I finally drove to the rink and was actually feeling OK. Before I knew it, I was on the ice for my warm-up. Those five minutes flew by like it was only 30 seconds. I practiced my forward and backward power circles, and those felt good, but the T-stop afterwards caused me to trip. Then I did my forward double 3 turns, which turned out fine. When I got to the backward double 3 turns, my body just wouldn't cooperate. I accidentally put all my weight on my heels and couldn't do the turns. Then the announcer said it was time to get off the ice. We didn't even get our 1 minute warning so a coach lobbied to give us one more minute (it was granted). I got to do two or three bracket patterns and that was it. I was shaky, and I felt horrible.
Worst. Warmup. Ever.
I didn't stick around to watch the first skater and even stayed out in the hallway when my skating friend K took the ice. I wanted to watch her, but I also needed to warm up my feet and calm my nerves. I closed my eyes and ran through my test again. I kept telling myself, "You can do this." I was so in the zone that when my coach came to talk to me, I didn't hear her initially.
Next thing I knew, it was my turn to take the ice. Power circles went fine (forward and backward). Forward double threes were steady. Backward double threes were another story. I got so nervous on the backward inside double threes that I actually put my foot down on the very last one. ARGH! The ones before the touch-down were OK, but not my best. I cruised through the backward circle 8, and my brackets were actually secure and steady.
The judges did not ask me to re-skate anything so I went to take my skates off. It hadn't been 5 minutes when the test coordinator approached my coach with my papers. My coach came over and told me the news... I passed! Two out of the 3 judges passed me, and the 3rd judge must have been dozing off somewhere because her score was 0.7 points under the judge who scored me the highest (note to non-skaters: most judges are in line with each other plus or minus one to two tenths of a point).
And my skating buddy K passed too! She passed from all 3 judges, which is phenomenal! I am so proud of her...and us! We are excited to become our rink's newest Gold Medalists and can't wait to see our names published in Skating Magazine.
Now onto my Adult Gold Freestyle elements... time to perfect my axel and lutz!
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