I had basically worked for 8 months on getting ready for Nationals. Which isn’t really THAT much time, but it feels like I had been preparing for a long time. For 6 or more hours a week I would focus on doing the same thing, over and over, to get it to the point where I was as good as I was going to be. And then I practiced some more, trying to make it even better.
And then it was time to compete. To show what all of this work had done. To show how good I was. And you know what I did? I screwed up huge in a way that I never had before. I did a combination of two things that had never happened to me, and combined they sent me to a lovely finish of 17th. It hurts to type it. I did that badly. THAT badly.
The pain has subsided a little bit in the 6 days since I competed, but mostly because I’ve been trying to think about other things. But I was driving home the other day and some music from my “get pumped up” playlist came on, and there is was. Failure.
So really all there is to do now is get back to practice and start over. I’ve got a year before I can make amends, but I also have a year to get better and fix things. And get mentally stronger.
But for now I’m taking a few weeks where I’m going to try to not think about skating at all. I think maybe I’ve had too much skating for a while.