Over the years so many of you have posted your testing experiences and an equal number of you generously gave advice and shared your knowledge. Thank you! Adult skaters lead lives that are a mystery to the “regular” folks and it’s so reassuring to know there is a supportive community out there. You people are great!

In the spirit of kinship, I thought I’d reciprocate. I took APB MITF and FS earlier this year. The test rink (a hour away) was full – I wonder if more skaters are testing because of the impending rule changes. The session was running nearly an hour ahead of schedule, so I had to step onto the ice almost immediately after I arrived. While I knew I’d be nervous (and had prepared) I didn’t expect that I could not --for the life of me --warm up. I stroked, ran through the moves, tried to breathe, but my legs felt stiff and cold. During the perimeter stroking, I kept telling myself I was getting blood to my legs, relax, relax, but to no avail. I went into auto-pilot. I did the rest of the moves reasonably well (BI edges were lousy and judge noted that), though I made some major scratchies in the three-turn pattern (judge noted). Afterwards, the judge called me over and asked to see my backward X-overs. Yeek! I had completely forgotten to do them! I mean, I really forgot, in the sense that I forgot that were such entity as backward X-overs! Ha ha. I passed without any reskates. The FS test was much less fraught, though I bungled my scratch spin big time ( no energy when pushing into it) and ended up with a pathetic three revolutions (judge said there was 4 and half—what?!!). It was quickly over and I passed. On to Bronze!

I’m glad I did it. If there are any people here who are considering testing, I’d say go for it!!! It won’t kill you and the prep work will actually help your skating.

Thanks to all of you!

What's with the back crossovers? When I did PBM I did 1 1/2 circles of the crossovers- I had to do a reskate. I had no idea I did it at the time, I apparently forgot to count. (My coach pulled me over and told me. I still have no idea why he told me, because then I was freaked out for the next move.) But the judge for that test told me which move to do next, and where to do it (there were 2 of us on the ice) so I wouldn't have been able to forget a move.

My scratch spin was counted weird too- all 3 judges wrote down different numbers of revolutions!!!

Congrats on the passes!

__________________
-Jessi
What I need is a montage...
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