It’s been several days since USA’s ended and I apologize once again for the delay in putting up a new post.  The very next day after the meet ended, I went up to New York to visit some old friends of mine, and currently, I’m in Washington DC, visiting my sister who works here.

Anyway, I’d like to back-track several days to the competition to fill you all in.  As many of you probably already know, this year’s USAs was my first meet back in over a year because of the knee surgery I had at the end of summer last year.  Naturally I was excited about being back on the floor again, but I’ll have to admit that there were definitely some pre-meet jitters because it had been so long since I saluted a judge last.  However, it wasn’t long before I felt right at home competing again and performing in front of the crowds.  Between the two days, aside from making one big and clear mistake when I came off of the pommel horse, everything else was pretty much the same as I’ve been doing in practice during the preparation process.  Unfortunately, I will not deny the fact that my final results wasn’t a great reflection of this.  When the meet ended and the dust settled, I was unable to get myself back onto the US National Team.

My coach and I had actually talked about this long before this meet even started.  Our main goal for this meet was simply to get back in there and compete, and not worry about the outcome.  Since I only got fully cleared by the doctor about four months ago, we decided that it would be best to keep our difficulties low.  We figured that this would help us avoid the risk of reinjury, something that’s especially important at this point in the game.  Naturally, this helped me improve my chances of hitting my routines, nonetheless, with the lack of difficulty, it made it tough for me to receive a high score even when I did hit.  Despite having known this all this time, not seeing my name as part of the national team was definitely a difficult thing to swallow.  I was clearly disappointed…

This has a lot to do with my competitive side.  It constantly yearns to be at the top of the game despite any circumstances.  However, after some talks with my coach and doing some reflecting on all that’s happened to me over this entire year, I realized that the fact that I was able to get through these two days of competition rather consistently was an accomplishment in itself.

I’ll admit that there were definitely still some pain in my leg, especially during the second day of competition, but the fact that I was able to get through them safely definitely boosted my confidence.  Just the fact of competing again allowed me to create a starting point – a place where I can begin to build on as my knee continues to recover to full health.

My coach made it mandatory to take a break for a bit.  After several days of taking some time off to heal some of the aches and pains, and to refresh my mind, I’ll be more than ready to get back in the gym again to begin building again.  The next domestic competition will be in February and I’m definitely very excited to get stronger and prepare again.  On to the next step!