JANUARY 15, 2007

Dear Friends,

Once again thank you for dropping by to look at our website. As most of you are aware Chrissy and I skated at the British Championships last week. It was a week of mixed emotions and as ever Chrissy and I resume our insane levels of optimism! I would like to share with you some of the tales from the week and keep you up to date with our skating developments. Hopefully writing about last week will be a cathartic process for me!;-)

 As you know the season had been affected by some health problems but leading up to the championships Chrissy and I were feeling great. We had been able to train hard and made a lot of improvements as a result. In the final week prior to the championships John and Sinead Kerr came to train at Ice Sheffield which further bolstered our motivation and desire to succeed. We left for Nottingham last Wednesday feeling buoyant and excited.

For those of you who are skaters and those of you that know the bizarre species of ice dancers will know the majority of us are innate "show offs". The chance to show off for a week's worth of performances was such fun for us. Performing started with the compulsory dance practice. The Golden Waltz is well suited to Chrissy and me. With illness problems out of the way and increased training time we had managed to improve the dance considerably from our performance at the Welsh Championships in November. We competed the dance really well, even managing to stay in time(!!). However we were disillusioned by the marks. We were placed last in this section by some considerable margin. Friends, fans, fellow skaters, fellow competitors, officials and judges not on the panel made time to come to Chrissy and me to state their confusion with the marking and also their enjoyment of our performance. I am positive that every skater who has ever competed has felt hard done by judging panels.....c'est la vie peut etre?

Whilst pleased with our performance there was a definite and inevitable feeling of disappointment knowing the competition result could no longer be as we had hoped. However I feel proud of the way Chrissy and I handled ourselves (after I let out a few expletives back stage!!). We skated well in both o.d. and f.d. practices but tumbles in both the actual performances closed the event for us. Truthfully we did really enjoy the skating despite the errors. It sounds corny but we love performing together and I am told that can be seen when we skate.

We want to thank the audience that were at the event. We were so lucky to get a really great crowd reaction. Many of our friends from Sheffield came to cheer us on and I am lucky that so many of my Nottingham friends were cheering for us as well. I will remember very fondly the audience reaction to us. What’s more numerous people came up to us to say how much they enjoyed watching us and what potential they believe we have for the future.

After performing the free dance Chrissy and I watched the rest of the event. We really enjoyed watching John and Sinead's performance. They truly are an inspiration. Their work ethic is world class and more importantly I am impressed by their fantastic competitive spirit. They were extremely encouraging to Chrissy and me throughout the event and I continually saw them making time to chat with all the other competitors in the championships. I am proud of them as fellow Scots and think they are great ambassadors for British skating. I hope to continue their good lead internationally asap.

Already we are keen to improve our skating and we are looking ahead to more experience next season. We have ideas for new programs that excite us. We will be glued to Eurosport for watching the European championships and Worlds in March. However before all the skating fun begins for us again we are going to take some timeout to rest and recover. Chrissy's busy with college and will be performing tomorrow night in her play which I am looking forward to seeing. I have no doubt she will be very good. We are both nursing some injuries which need clearing up and Chrissy could do with some chillout time for her immune system to return to normal after her bout with glandular fever earlier in the season......more obviously though there is a whole lot of Ben & Jerry's ice cream that I need time to get stuck into!;-)

Best wishes to you all for a happy, healthy and prosperous 2007.

Mark