First reginonal meet

Ruri's first taste of competition from the south west region regional of 15 clubs (CA, NV, AZ). She participated in all the races coach signed up for her and got onto the podium twice despite falling twice. There are six girls in the JO Elementary girl group and 5 in the Standard Elementary girl group. By the way, Junior Olympic (JO) are for skaters within their first three years of racing. Standard are for all skaters in that age group.

We got up 5:30am and got to the rink 6am. It was already full of people and skaters were practicing. We were a bit unprepared with the numbers etc. Luckily other parents were there to help and we were ready for the practice of Ruri's group.

The following are the list of events and results for Ruri:
- JO Elementary 700m: Ruri was in 4th position into the 5th lap and she fell by herself. This is the place I've seen many falls, more on the venue later. She finished last.
- JO Elementary 300m: Ruri finished 4th in this event.
- JO elementary two girl relay 5x2 laps. She was with her friend from another club and they places second.
- JO freshman/elementary 4 girl. This was going to be an very exciting relay for Ruri 1x5 laps. However, the first skater of her team made a very agressive pass at the 4th lap and was disqualified. They didn't place.

The second day was for Standard Elementary girls. There are five skaters in the group, some of them are the same who raced for JO, just like Ruri.
- Standard Elementary 700m: Ruri finished last
- Standard Elementary 300m: Ruri finished last
- Standard Elementary mix 2 (boy and girl) relay 5x2 laps: Of the 4 teams competed for the relay, Ruri's team finished first after a rerun of the race due to a crash at about the 5th lap. In the interrupted race that had 7 teams, Ruri slipped in the start and was trailing. Then she made a late pass into the corner and the girl she was trying to pass fell and tripped Ruri into a fall. Ruri now has both of her knee bruised.
- Freshman and below open: Ruri was laped at about the 5th lap.

All in all, it was a good experience for Ruri and she had a taste of winning (with the help of her teammate who is the top of his class).

















I also raced the first day (JO master men). As I expected, I was last of the 7 skaters for both 1000m and 500m, but I was not far behind. In both cases, I had a good start but my stamina was not there for me at the end. Interestingly, for the 5x2 lap relay, although my club partner didn't show up due to sickness, my partner was from the Veteran class (even older:-), and naturally we were the last of the 4 teams. However, due to the first three teams wrongly counting their laps because of the sign board mistake, all three teams were disqualified, and our team ended up the first (a bit like the Australia dude who passed the wiped out skaters including Apollo Ohno in 2002 Salt Lake Olympic).