Home Sweet Home

Back in Salt Lake after Ice Nationals. Quite an experience. I had to skate my age group because of qualification requirements to skate the Am Cup final and I wasn't in Salt Lake soon enough to skate some of the other Am Cup races. We had 9 skaters in total in the 'intermediate division' six of us ended up earning points in at least two distances, 4 of those six are inline skaters.. just for some perspective.

This season in short track they have a few new rules which makes things a little different for us because we don't know all the rules yet and then there are the new rules. In the two previous races I skated this season I did not get disqualified in a single race, that includes heats semi's finals whatever. At nationals I had four distances.. I ended up being disqualified in two of them. The first one is on me I get that. But from the explanation I received the second one was still on me, but because I fell down. If I had stayed on my feet I wouldn't have ended up committing a foul or whatever you want to call it. The other two races, the 500m and the 3000m I won.

The basis for the season which for me started in November after worlds, was to try and get as much of the technique down as possible and to gain experience. We got some of the technique down this season and still have a long, long way to go on that aspect.. at least until I'll be satisfied with the way I skate. We gained a good amount of experience this season but, obviously the more we race and practice the more experience we are going to get. But next season the goal is to improve technically a lot but also to qualify for seniors and for the am cup final. I think the racing and the mistakes made this season will set us up well for next season.

Now I am here in Salt Lake and the ice season is over. I am on my own in terms of what kind of training I decide to do from now until May 2nd, when the team will begin our summer training for the next ice season and our organized inline practices for the inline season. Right now it is March 15th, so I think the next two weeks I'm going to take it a little easy. I'm not going to do to much but am still going to be on my skates. One thing that I have to take into consideration is that I haven't taken any time off at all since I got back from China in 2009. If I don't at least slow down for a little I could end up running into trouble down the road, I'm just going to play it safe and cut out all the extra stuff I've been doing for the next two weeks besides the skating time. Once April gets here it's going to be a pretty tough stretch so I want to make sure I'm prepared for that.