I was sixteen...a junior lady at Empires (NY state games)...best shape of my life...why was I so damn nervous?

I won the previous year as a novice (one level below junior). Having nowhere to go but up, that's exactly where I headed. And then, I was competing one level below elite (the ever impressive senior lady).

I was ready for it, no doubt about it. I had a triple planned that could blow away the field...if I nailed it.

Really, if you don't have all your triples before age 13 and you're still an intermediate or a novice, you're all washed up. (Sad, I know. But without breasts and hips, you can spin like a top.) But at sixteen, your trump card is maturity. You got a hundred up on those little girls if you can show the judges you feel it in your bones. Ten-year old automatons just can't fake that.

So I had completed all of my typical pre-skate activities that morning--At the hotel, I watched the Xmen cartoon, ate a promax bar, drank 32 oz of blue powerade and listened to my program tape, visualizing every jump, spin, mohawk and mazurka. I put on my dress--a likeness of Julie Andrews' getup in Victor Victoria (the music to which I would skate that day), overdid my makeup (Bobby, one of the judges, told me after I kicked ass in the initial round that I needed to hoe it up with more eyeshadow and blush), and shellacked my hair in a pony tail that would bounce with just the right oomph on the ice.

But I just didn't feel right. I was really f-ing nervous.

Why? I don't know. It's not like there was all that much pressure on me...there is always pressure, but you learn to deal with it by realizing that you are out there strutting your stuff because you want to be, not because you have to be. I hadn't competed at this level the previouys year, so it wasn't like I was defending a title. I was in Lake Placid, on a surface over which I had glided almost my entire life. My mother was there for comfort. My coach seemed relaxed (really unusual for him). What the heck was wrong with me? I do believe I was scared...

The short drive from the hotel to the Olympic Center did nothing to calm my anxiety. I listened to my music on my headphones a few more times, dry running on the mats outside the arena. I listened to my mixed tape that fused gaudy broadway music with a little Ozzie and a little Sixpence None the Richer (my taste in music back then was a little more eclectic than it is now, I'll admit). But I was nowhere near calm by the time I had to lace up my skates.

I don't watch my competitors skate, and the only person with whom I could stomach interaction was my coach. My mother went to her usual spot at the very back of the bleachers, far far away from any of my friends and their chatty mothers and desperately close to an escape route in case she chickened out at the last minute and did not want to watch me.

And then it was time for warm up. During the brief pause before the announcer would call my flight to the ice, my stomach was liquid. My knees and hands were shaking and my face had gone ashen. And then it happened...I felt the familiar thickening of saliva that precipitates vomiting.

In front of the judges, my fellow competitors, my coach, a majority of the audience and the zamboni guy, I threw up blue powerade and promax bar. Fortunately, I was near a garbage can, which provided suitable reception to my purge.

I took my head out of the garbage, faced all the faces peering at my questionable activity, and instantly felt like A MILLION BUCKS. I was me again, ready to roar. I took the ice for warm-up like a friggin' champion.

Come on, girl! You can do it--you do it every day in practice. And here is your chance to show it off!

And my subsequent performance solidified that image. First ten seconds, bam! double axel. I followed with my trademark double toe-double toe-double loop (scandalous three-jump combination in a world where two would suffice). Sprials, spins footwork. And then I hit it--triple salchow, landed! The rest of the three and one half minute program was like flying, and grand finale-d with a death drop and a grand affirmation from the crowd. I held my end pose two seconds longer just to soak it all in. I left the ice that day with a medal around my neck and a euphoria that lasted all week.

I live for that feeling. And the other night, after we wrapped our first show, I felt it again. The terrific sense of accomplishment after having purged myself of inner demons and self-doubt, and having gone out there to showcase what I work hard to perfect.

That's how I know I'm in the right place here and now, doin' the right thing...