Home from Manhattan

We competed in the Manhattan Amateur Classic yesterday.  The MAC is the third largest all-amateur competition in the US. We competed in three heats - Sr. I and Sr. II Bronze Standard, and Sr. I and Sr. II Silver Standard.  I didn't dance as well as I had hoped - didn't feel solid on my feet.  Out of all we had 2 x  5th place finishes and one 6th place finish.  The one bright note is that in one heat, we were scored FIRST by one judge in Quickstep!  Yay!  Of course, it all depends on what each judge sees you do, but I'm very happy with that.   I think the competition was as strong as we have ever seen it.

I had been feeling pretty good, and we got warmed up well, but our first dance of the first heat just didn't feel good - too many nerves, a little unsteady.  It didn't set a good tone for me for the whole day.

I've also gotten out of the way the thing no one wants to do - I fell at the very end of the quickstep in our first heat - either turned my ankle or stepped on my dress, or both.  Down to the floor I went without any warning, pulling DH over with me.  Yikes!  Unfortunately, I tweaked my ankle when I fell - and it continued to get worse throughout the rest of the dancing - I was barely able to finish the last heat - luckily that one was a bronze, so only had 2 dances.  I had to coast the last half of the last quickstep.  The ankle is still sore today, so I'll try to be good to it and rest it, which means no practicing today, probably. 

One thing we did was go out and push the limits - we were dancing big, but we pushed to the point that we weren't altogether under control.  I think we had flashes of staying in our new dance frame, but it wasn't consistent enough.  We need to spend more time in the studio than we have done for the last couple of months.  It needs to be back to every morning.  And gym time in the evenings when we don't have dance lessons.  Stamina was a problem.  Because or routines don't fit into the studio, we don't dance for a whole song without breaking.  We have to figure out some way to dance continuously for a complete song and still dance big. 

Next up, Mid-Atlantic Dancesport Championships in Bethesda at the end of February.  So we have 6 weeks to get ready for that one.