Progress

Well, I've been on the ice for almost a month. My second day on the ice I skated a 1000m in a time of 1:39 something. A few days later they told me if I kept progressing I could skate a time trial that would count to have a chance to qualify to skate the skate-in at the US Short Track Championships. I would have to skate under a 1:32.5 by December 6th. Well, that was the goal and Saturday on the 4th I skated an official time trial in the time of 1:31.71 which qualifies me to skate the skate-in. Although I get to skate a skate-in race I have a lot of work to do in the next 10 days. In order to actually race I have to skate under 1:30 in the skate-in time trial which is a pretty fast time. I have to average 10.0 or faster a lap but it gets more difficult because the opening lap is a 11.8 or a 11.9 which means for the remaining 8 laps I have to skate on average faster then 9.75.

At first I wasn't sure if I would be able to get the time I needed which also qualifies me to skate am cup A group from now on. Especially because there have been some pretty rough practices. I still have so much to work on but I'm slowly getting better technically. This past week the national team skaters that did not go to the World Cup race have been skating with the group that I practice with which I think has been really good for me. I skate with the national team girls and they all skate better technically then I do but we can go about the same speed so it helps me out a lot I think.

I'm also still skating on a pair of my old inline boots which are not exactly ideal for short track. I hope when I get a short track boot it helps out a lot with some of my technique that I have been working on.