Close but no cigar

Apparently fairgrounds in the 19th century would give out cigars as prizes for winning a game. If you came close but didn't quite win, no cigar for you! Think Soup Nazi but about 100 years earlier. That sums up my evening well.

I got to Roby around 6ish and put my gear on slowly. It is a skating rink in the winter and a fairly smooth cement surface once the ice melts. It had mostly dried out after yesterday's monsoon. It was a crazy crazy day and I was mentally out of it tonight.

I skated around a few laps and did some scissors and figure eights. The surface was smoother than I was expecting but it still gave a lot of resistance to stops and slides. I think I'll be coming here often this summer.

Empress and Bettie showed up just before 6:30 and got everything ready for the level ones. We had some warm up and stretching time and Empress did some really nice visualization stuff. Unfortunately whatever I gained from my visualization I shattered by making the doom noise to myself when they said we'd be doing crossovers first.

I think it was tough for me, knowing that was the one thing I needed to work on. Granted, I'm glad we did it at the beginning rather than the end because by the end of the night I was pooped. I guess it was good to get that out of the way. It made everything else way stress free.

Empress and Bettie both told me during the drill that I was close. After we did the balance drill (which I did a million times better than last time) Empress said that it was a technical issue and not a balance issue.

We did all the rest of the level one stuff... sticky skates, slides, stops, stepping. Neisha left some of her butt on the Roby Park surface during baseball slides - ouch! It took some time to get accustomed to not sliding so much but I think everything generally went well.

After the assessment finished, Empress pulled myself, Chuck, and Erica aside. We were the borderline people for, you guessed it, crossovers! She took some time watching and skating with each of us. Chuck ended up passing (yay Chuck!).

Empress and Bettie talked to each of us afterward and they hit the nail on the head with me. My issue is not balance, it's fatigue. My legs, especially my left one, are not quite strong enough yet to be able to sustain massive amounts of cross-overs. What that means is I can do them, but I get tired quickly. When I get tired I get clunky. When I'm clunky I'm vulnerable to hits. Totally understandable.

They said, and I asked if I could quote them, that the two of us "are mere practices away" from passing. That really gives me a renewed send of hope and drive for the next couple of weeks. I want this so badly. I want to progress so that family and friends can come and watch me. It feels like reaching for the finish line in slow-mo.

We've also been cleared to skate with the league unless they're doing crazy hardcore hitting. With leaning or booty blocking we can participate which is really cool. Until we officially pass, if the rest of the freshies are doing stops and slides we'll be out with the league. Scary but very cool and it sort of gives a fresh level of personal responsibility for our success. As Bettie and Vicious said earlier today, once you pass, that's it - you're out of the nest and we need to be even more responsible for our own success and/or failure.

So a big giant huge congrats to everyone who passed. Hopefully I'll be joining you shortly. To those who didn't, fuggeddaboudit! Well, don't really forget, but you know what I mean. The feedback that we're all provided gives us things to focus on in the coming weeks and months.

As Empress likes to remind me, on my very first practice I couldn't get up off the floor, even with Bettie and Hazel's help (thanks to some of those hardcore plyometrics). To put that in perspective, Bettie said that I did my single knee slide recovery in two seconds - the level two standard. If you'd have told me on day one that I'd do that five months later I don't know if I'd have believed you. I know that even when I do pass that I have a lot of challenges ahead of me for level twos- chiefly, transitions/turning-toe stops and the 25 in 5. Doing transitions is something that I can drive my butt to Roby for and practice all on my own.

Thank you to all of the training staff and especially to Bettie and Empress for making assessments a really positive and encouraging environment. I know what I need to do and am ready to seriously push it. I'll be rockin' the ankle weights at work tomorrow!