2014 Nebelhorn Blog: Practice & Free Dance Days

Day 4
We were able to sleep in and enjoy a late breakfast as our practice wasn’t until noon. We were motivated to skate our best with nothing to lose and had a strong practice. The rest of the day was pretty uneventful and filled with errands and dinner. When we were dinner-hunting the previous evening, a nice stranger recommended a traditional German restaurant with decent prices. After receiving vague directions with German landmarks, we actually managed to locate this haven of German food! We enjoyed another blind meal, unaware of what we ordered until it came to our table. We were determined for a good night’s sleep before our early morning start the next day, so we took some Advil PM and conked out.

Day 5
We started the day with a pretty rough practice as the “pre-freedance-runthrough” nerves hit hard. Luckily, we had 6 hours to recover from this before we competed. After the practice, we both ate our second breakfast and relaxed by surfing the net and napping. Sooner than we wanted, it was time to head back to rink and prepare for our final performance. Our coach gave us a couple of encouraging words, and left the rest up to us. We ended up having another clean skate and enjoyable performance, and even had a clap going (our coach later informed us that the clap was the “audience helping us because we were out of time.”) At this point, the marks were not important to us and we were happy that we went out there and gave our best performance. After watching the rest of the event, we walked up the side of mountain to a little cafe that Richard was familiar with and enjoyed a nice treat before walking all the way back down again for dinner. We ate dinner at our Schuetzenhaus hotel and then began preparing for our long journey back home.

All in all, we enjoyed our trip to Oberstdorf and were pleased with our clean skates. Now it is time to head back home and get back to work before our next competition in Barrie, Canada… in 2 weeks! We would personally like to thank all the support we received in Germany and from those watching at home.

~ Carter & Rich