Focus on the positive

I've decided that too many of my blog posts sound like rants. Talking about how my hip hurts, or how I'm not losing any weight doesn't make it get any better. I'm going to try to avoid dwelling on the things that went wrong during a practice (see previous post) and try to focus on what went well during practice instead. This means that some nights I may have a short post but we'll see how things go...

Tonight's practice was at JFK. It felt like my first time there in ages. The floor was ridiculous. It's highly polished concrete that, during the off-season, becomes a hockey rink. It's usually pretty slick but my 88A Radar Flat Outs are generally OK. Tonight was crazy.... I felt like I was sliding even on the straightaways! There must be a way to use the slide to some sort of advantage, like in rally car driving!

We did a double pyramid drill tonight that I did probably 90% of. The 10% I was out was not due to a physical issue directly, rather it was a "wardrobe malfunction". I laced my skates too tight and was having foot issues so I quickly took them off, stretched my feet out, and got back on the track. We went up to five laps and back down, doing calisthenics in the middle in between; then switched directions and went up to five and back down again. Considering I completed my first ever pyramid just last week I am pleased that I did as much of this one as I did.

We also did a weaving pace line drill. It's interesting that pace lines use to be the bane of my existence. I couldn't do them to save my life. Now I don't even really think about them. Granted, I put myself in the slow line but with the other vets in that line I don't know that there's any shame in that. I was at the front of the line which meant that I did my weaves last. I made it through the whole line, trying to be a good communicator (thank you Gladiator mouth guard!), and still had enough juice to do my weaves too.

The last thing that I don't think I did great as compared to the rest of the league but it was personal improvement for me was moving from side to side across the track using "mini-crossovers". We did a brief drill where we had to skate the length of the straightaway moving quickly from inside to outside. I want to work on that more next time I'm at Roller Kingdom on a more stable surface - I hope it's agility week next week - my fave!

June is full of promotional events and I'll be spending all day Saturday hanging out at the Gilford liquor store with Maully O and Miss Chiff - hopefully I'll be able to glean some good derby pointers from them while I'm there!

WTB endurance plx

Tonight's practice kicked my butt. It was one of those soaked-braids kind of practices. Even now taking a deep breath feels... weird. It was endurance night - practice focus is harder to keep track of now that we're moving around so much.

It probably didn't look like much to the casual observer but I'm pretty proud of myself tonight. It wasn't pretty but I did every drill for the entire duration and skated on the actual track the entire time. I thought I was going to die at some points, but I did it - including the pyramid drill which I've never completed before. I thought I did ok with replacement blocking with Hollywood, Vinnie, and Vixen.

Although it was a positive night for me, it became even more apparent that I have no endurance.  I don't always have the ability to get out and skate in the evenings so I'm trying to decide whether using an elliptical machine (lovingly referred to as the "elliptiwotsit" by Mr. Carnate) or my recumbent bike will have a greater effect.

The one thing that wasn't so good tonight that I may go see a doctor about again was my hip. Between walking in the parade on Monday and the big change in humidity today my left hip was killing me from the time I woke up this morning. Tylenol arthritis didn't even touch it. It made maintaining a low derby position challenging.

We also did a suicide drill where we sprint and do baseball slides at each end for two minutes. Hauling my fat arse up off the ground was very difficult by the end. I don't know if there is any way to strengthen those "getting up" muscles besides practicing getting up but I'm going to look into it. Dropping 75 pounds wouldn't hurt either. ;-)

I put my tuners back on for Roller Kingdom and SNHU this weekend... I notice the difference between those and my flat outs a lot more now than I did when I first switched over. I felt much faster tonight as compared to using my flat outs. I need all the help I can get!

Level 1/2?

Last night, I got my first taste on contact... sort of. The contact portion of the league was doing a drill where you form a pace line and everyone is given a "secret number". The person closest to the back of the line with #1 is the jammer and the other person with the #1 further up the pace line had to block them when they came by.

Initially FM Erica and I were over in the freshie corral but Bettie was watching the drill and said that the two of us should be out there - so out there we went! I happened to be jammer #1 and earned myself a minor back block when Osteo came out and booty-blocked me. I didn't fall, and I didn't turn it into a major by pushing her over so not bad for my first encounter with contact!

A bit later when it was Osteo's turn to jam and I had to block I definitely whiffed it. I saw her coming up on the far outside and tried to swoop out to catch her but my timing was way off and I went behind her... I think it'll take some work to get the timing thing down. I hung with the pace line again for about 98% of it... the other 2% I spent on the side stretching a mega side cramp.

Maully O came up to me at the beginning of practice and said that she wanted to work with me on booty blocking and Slam said she put a booty blocking drill on the lineup for Sunday "in my honor"... I must have done something right on Monday!

I know I'm getting a little bit stronger, and a little bit faster, with a little more endurance but impatient me is taking over again and I just want to be better now! I know that endurance is not something that you just wake up one day and have - it builds up over time. Hopefully my 25 in 5 endurance will be built up by the time I master my turning toe stops which are the only two things I'm really concerned about for level twos when that day comes.

I just need to keep pushing the crossovers at every practice. If I am sore and stiff, like I am today, then I know that I pushed it. If I wake up the next morning from a practice and feel fine then that tells me I should have worked harder!

Last night I started to conquer a woosy JFK fear I've had of skating over the track rope. It seems like it would trip me and I would fall on my face. Some people roll over it and others step over it so I guessed it was a comfort thing. During the speed skating drill I made myself skate over it and didn't fall so I was quite pleased with that.

Helen 1, Pace Line 0

Ok... so I have to give the pace line credit for previously kicking my ass, and things certainly weren't perfect this time but I'm going to take it for the personal victory that it is. Tonight I stuck with a pace line for the entire drill.

Those who have been following this journey for a while know that pace lines are (one of) my nemesis. Between back pain from bad form and a weak core to the agonizing arch pain I used to get with my old skates, pace lines did me in completely.

1) I was slow. I didn't really have sticky skating DOWN yet and too-tight trucks made things more difficult than they should have been. While I wasn't exactly Zippy McSpeederson tonight I feel like I had the technique down. With looser trucks I was able to get at lot more of the "slalom" action that Irate always describes. It also makes pushing around corners easier.

2) I was too bent over. I still struggle with this and experienced a bit of back pain tonight but Slam's reminder of "if your back hurts you're doing it wrong" helped me remember to sit into it more. Sitting into it fatigues those same hip-area muscles that give me trouble on crossovers but hey, if they're getting fatigued then I am using them and they are getting stronger!

The drill in question was the "endless jammer" drill which is where the league splits in half and one half packs up and the other half forms a paceline. The first person in the pace line skates ahead and pushes through the pack like a jammer would then ends up at the back of the pace line. Rinse. Repeat. I nearly hung the whole time in the pack but had to drop out at the end for water (I've got this nasty cough thing going on).

The only drill I had trouble with tonight was the transitions drill - on the whistle, transition. This was a challenge because I can't do transitions to save my life. Hollywood offered to work with me on them if we can find some time outside of our work schedules which is cool.

We did a lot of work tonight on form for speed - between Trixie's hints and what I have gleaned so far from my national-champion speed skating uncle I at least mentally grasped what was going on. Fix the fatigue, fix a lot of things. We did the cross-over component drill (push with one leg only, then the other).

We also did a non-contact version of Lion and Gazelle which was PFA - Pretty Freaking Awesome. I thought I was going to get eaten immediately and I didn't! The first time I went I was a gazelle. The whistle blew and I just took off. I tried to get speed-skater low on the straightaways and build up as much speed as I could and squeak around the turns. No one caught me and I think I surprised some people (including myself) which was cool. The next time I went out I was a lion and was able to catch the gazelles fine (they were instructed to stack packed up).

I got my first taste of positional blocking and I want more. I need to get those crossovers nailed so I can play with the big girls! I had loosened my trucks another half turn at open skate which was great for agility moves but I decided that I felt way too unstable during crossovers and balancing so I dialed them back a quarter turn and they felt much better. Maybe I'll do them back a quarter again in a couple of weeks.

Soooo... all in all an awesome, but tiring practice tonight. A little less coughing and a little more breathing would be good for Thursday! Thursday's goal - skate on the track. No skating on the outside for me. If anyone sees me skating on the outside, please yell at me unless it looks like I am under great duress. Thank you to Slam I Am for an awesome practice while SFOD was away playing with the Nuts.

A Tolstoy Novel

First, since there is certainly no excuse for not writing for 8 days, allow me to at least offer an explanation. Anyone who has participated in a roller derby bout as either a skater or a volunteer can attest to the amount of work that goes into preparations and the running of the actual day.

After the bout last Saturday I was pretty darn derby'ed out. No bones about it. The week following said bout was a derby filled week of practices, meetings, and post-bout cleanup. Already being derby'ed out, after more derby I didn't particularly feel like coming home and writing about derby. Anyhoo... I get the feeling that I am about to test the character limits of Blogger posts. I'll try to break this down a bit.

The Bout.
We all showed up at Manchester's JFK Coliseum around 12:30 on Saturday for team and league photos. We discovered that it takes a pretty wide shot to get 70+ skaters in it. Huge thanks to sports photographer Rick Lopez for covering the bout!

Before I joined NHRD I never had the chance to see one of their bouts. By the time KrushHer's poster for the last bout of 2009 registered in my brain, the date had already passed. I had no idea what to expect beyond a scrimmage on crack. I was coordinating stats for the evening - I usually arrange all the stats for scrimmages during practice so it made sense to do it for the bout as well.

For those who don't personally know me, I am an organizational nut. You'd never know from looking at my messy desk but when I work on a project I need to know exactly what is happening when, who is responsible for it, and ensure that I've got all my paperwork ready. I woke myself up out of a dead sleep the night before the bout because I realized that I had forgotten to make extra copies of the rosters. It is good to remember, for future reference, that printing 12+ sheets of paper at 2am does NOT wake Mr. Carnate up.

As soon as we finished the league and team photos I set about getting everything arranged for the "Stats Sexies" as they have been dubbed in our league. Clipboards, pencils, stats sheets, rosters, instructions where to bring everything at half time. I think it all went pretty well. I did position tracking so I didn't really get to flat out watch the game - this will come into play again later this post.

The Cherry Bombs played first in a 30 minute bout against CMRD's Petticoat Punishers. The final score was 17-40 CMRD. While we lost, we did much better than was had versus the same team in a scrimmage a few weeks earlier. Victory comes in all shapes and sizes.

Skate Free or Die! played in the headline bout against The Ironbound Maidens of the Garden State Rollergirls. We play and beat their B-Team, the Brick City Bruisers, twice last year so the league decided to take their game up another notch and play GSR's A-Team this year. They were definitely the A-Team bringing a lot of heavy hitters to the track. Doing position tracking I could hear the coaches saying, "their putting all their strength in the back!" and I could definitely see that. I am in absolute awe of the jamming skills of the SFOD jammers - May, Bandit, Chicana, Rosie, and Bam Bam, but they were pretty much shut down by the walls GSR was putting up.

A lot of people think that jammers make the game which isn't 100% true. I've heard it said by people in derby that whoever controls the pack controls the jam. I think this is closer to the truth. We have amazing jammers but because GSR had such tight control of the pack they had a hard time getting through to score. I know that I am definitely not jammer material so I only hope that someday I can learn to block as well as our top blockers and learn to work together with my future team as well as GSR did to form those impenetrable walls.

We kicked it up a notch in the second period - Chicana was on fire and earned MVP for it - but it wasn't enough and the final score was 117-33 GSR. Again, everyone skated their butts off, and victory comes in many forms. We are going to be fully sanctioned in WFTDA soon and frequently playing teams that are much better than us. From a PR/Marketing perspective, we have to figure out how to spin the fact that we had an undefeated home season last year yet we'll likely be losing a higher percentage of bouts this year into a good thing (because it is).

All in all, the bout was an amazing experience. We had over 950 fans in attendance which is a league record. While the JFK holds 1,600 and we didn't fill to capacity, we sold out of physical tickets early on and had to start marking peoples' hands with marker to prove their entry. My Dad and his girlfriend came, along with Mr. Carnate and my BFF but they're not in a rush to come back until I'm skating in bouts myself (no pressure... more on this later). I'm looking forward to helping to promote the 5/22 bout and breaking the 1,000 fan mark!

The Day After.

After spending about 12 hours in derby land and as much as I love derby, by Sunday morning when I woke up I was ready to take a bit of a derby vacation. It turns out that you can still burn out on something that you adore. Unfortunately, there was work to be done and a good chunk of it HAD to be done on the Sunday.

I woke up and went out for breakfast with Mr. Carnate. He had a hard time figuring out what was going on during the bout so I tried to explain it to him a bit better at breakfast. He wasn't particularly interested. When we got home I started the process of scanning all of the stats sheets from the night before to send out to the captains. 

I was asked to write up a bout recap for out 2/20 bout against GMDD and was asked to write one again this time. DNN is very particular about the content and style of writing that they want for submitted recaps. They are a self-professed sports journalism size, though they recognize that nine times out of ten the content the receive is written by someone closely connected to a league. They want their recaps concise, fluff-free, and filled with stats.

While I had all the stats sheets in front of me it so much easier to look at them in summary after they've been entered into the WFTDA stats book, which is really a giant, multi-tab excel spreadsheet. I spent about five hours loading almost all the stats information into the sheets. It wasn't difficult, just time consuming. The people filling out the rest of the stats sheets did an awesome job which made everything straightforward to enter.

After I loaded as much data as I could tolerate I took a break for a bit. I had until midnight to get it to DNN to make their weekend wrap up and I still wanted that derby break. I ended up taking a three hour nap and by the time I woke up it was time for open skate. With assessments coming up I didn't want to miss any skating opportunities so I went. I shouldn't have.

Open skate wasn't bad, but by the time I got home  it was pushing 9:30 and I still had 400 words of recap to write. Allow me to tell you that it's difficult to write a recap of a losing bout for a league which you are a part of. DNN is very strict in what they will and won't print and even if you write stuff like, "Team A gave it their all" they usually cut it. They don't want spin, they want facts. I spun things in our favor as much as I felt I responsibly could from a sports journalism perspective and finished both recaps at 10:45.

I put a shout out for the league looking for someone to proof it before it went in but I didn't get a response until Sin D. emailed me at 12:15. I had submitted it about 20 minutes earlier to meet the DNN deadline without anyone else in roller derby (I had Mr. Carnate look it over) reading it. I wish I hadn't (more on this later).

Monday Practice.

This week was scheduled to be an agility week. We ended up doing a "25 in 5" practice in the opposite direction, which kills me no matter what skates I'm wearing. The other thing about that drill is that I ALWAYS lose count. I think I did 11 laps which means that, even in the correct direction, I have a long way to go. 

My problem is that my leg muscles get so fatigued so quickly. Even going in the correct direction, the top of my left quad near my hip, gets fatigued from frequent crossovers within just a few laps. I guess if it's getting tired that means I'm using it at least. I'm try to reach my right leg across more when I crossover but I feel like I get tangled up in the flab on my inner legs sometimes. I've seriously considered wrapping them in plastic wrap to see if it makes any difference at all. We did some relays which are always fun. I continue to adore my new skates.

Tuesday. Ugh.

I think Tuesday ended up being the low point in my week. My recap went up on DNN that afternoon and got some negative feedback (and, to be fair, some positive as well). I was contacted personally with some pointed feedback about how the recap made our league look to potential leagues who could play us. It was never my intention to make our league look bad - I wasn't upset, I was outright embarrassed because, as I wrote two posts ago, I love NHRD.

In a misguided effort to do the right thing - I'm big on personal responsibility, if I make a mess, I should clean it up - I wrote to DNN and asked them to remove the recap, and to head off any other people who were potentially upset by the choice of words, posted a quick note to the league apologizing and letting them know that I requested that it be removed. I didn't want our league, or the leagues we played, to think I was dissing them.

It turns out that that was an even worse thing to do. My day, from about 1pm on, ended up being a continual downward spiral as the fallout from my unreviewed caption snowballed. We had a PR meeting that night and I knew that the issue would be brought up again. I headed right over to Jillian's after work so I could pre-game it for a little bit. I needed some adult refreshment after the day I'd had. The PR meeting continued the fun and it was productive, yet contentious at the end. 

My day ended with a drive home from Manchester in tears, wondering how much more positively I could have written a sports journalism piece on an ~80 point loss and still had DNN accept it. As it was, they edited out the key piece of information about this being the first time we played GSR's A-Team. PMS + work + recap brouhaha = no good very bad day. I contemplated writing to Trina and telling her that I wouldn't be at practice Thursday. I didn't know how I would react if people came up to me and brought up the recap again and I didn't want to embarrass the league any further.

Wednesday.

Continuing to feel like poop the next morning, I had a note in my inbox from Justice Feelgood Marshall, the managing editor of DNN. He said he'd written articles before that were poorly received by his league so he understood the situation and said that he would remove the recap, although he didn't like to from a journalistic perspective. He reiterated what it was that they were looking for in pieces and said that they were looking forward to my next submission. This made me feel a little bit better.

Later that night, I saw I had a missed call from our PR Director. I was kind of dreading calling her back because I figured that the recap wound would be reopened. Instead I had a really nice 90 minute conversation with her which helped me to better understand the history of PR in the league, and what the proper protocol, if you will, should have been in this situation. I still felt embarrassed about the whole thing but I was no longer afraid to go to practice on Thursday.

Thursday... assessments nearing.

Practice on Thursday was back at the JFK. Fortunately, none of my fears about being accosted over the recap came true although it ended up being a rough night for other reasons. We did the 25 in 5 drill again, this time in the correct direction. As always, I lost count sometime after 12. I was really trying to do crossovers on every single turn. I was doing them but this made my left leg crap out on me pretty quickly.

Bettie skated up next to me as I was rounding a corner doubled over. I swore at myself and said to her, "I'm not going to pass again, am I?" She shook her head - which, clearly, I knew - and said, "They're still not natural. We need to make sure that you don't need to think about them when you're getting hit" or something to that effect. While I know that not passing assessments isn't a mark against me personally, it still stung that I'm going to be spending another three months as "fresh meat".

After everything else this week it was the icing on the cake. I did a few more misty-eyed laps before the drill came to a close and managed to pull it together, at least on the outside, for the rest of practice. I wanted to ask Bettie for a meat sticker to put on my helmet. I didn't feel like I deserved the name if I was such a loser that I couldn't do something that basic. We spend the last portion of drill doing transitions (which I am crap at) and then having open freshie time to work on whatever we needed to for assessments. I couldn't do crossovers in the area, and even if I could my legs were pretty dead at that point. I went through everything else on the assessment and then sat down for some water.

I have nothing against any of the other freshies but it knotted me up inside looking at some of them that I knew would be passing on their first trip through. I envied them because they were able to make measurable progress in the eyes of the league. My family and friends, including my husband don't really want to attend any bouts until I'm skating in them which, at this point, feels like decades away. If it's going to take me six plus months to pass my level ones, how many years will it take for my level twos? I want to share my newfound passion with them but they don't seem particularly interested until it's something they can come and watch and that hurts (yet I sort of understand at the same time). So now the pressure is on. My goal is to be scrimmage eligible at the beginning of next season so there might be a shot of me being teamed sometime in 2011 but I don't know how realistic that goal is.

Sunday - Recruitment Night.

I wasn't going to loosen my trucks this week because I didn't want to still be adjusting to them for assessments. Now that I know I'm not going to pass I'm going to do them another half turn tonight. I can feel the advantage of having looser trucks, I just don't want to do them so fast that I am unstable all the time.

We have at least six or seven freshies already lined up for July. I honestly don't know where we're going to put everyone! Pixie put up the league photo from 2008 and we've grown probably 200% since then. it's pretty amazing to see!

Our next home bout is May 22nd at 6pm at JFK. If you're a local we'd love to see you there to help break the 1,000 fan mark!

It's all in the hips...

I didn't particularly want to go to practice tonight. I was super duper tired and had a frazzley day at work. I just wanted to have a chill night. I did go to practice in the end and I am glad I did. I started out grumpy but ended up feeling pretty darn good, though pooped.

Tonight was a short practice for some reason so we didn't start until 8:15. We did 30 minutes of off-skates plyometrics to get us started. I always find myself in a dilemma with these because if I push myself during plyo, I'm jello for skating. If I take it easy then I'm OK for skating.

I decided to push it and earned myself a very sore bum. As difficult as plyo is for me I really like the way I feel after I do it. I need to make myself do it at home more often!

As predicted, I was jello afterward. We really only worked on one thing for the last half hour of practice - crescents. I had a lot of trouble with these when we first did this drill a few months ago. Now I know that my trucks were far to tight (they still could use some loosening) and I wasn't moving my hips.

Tonight I worked with Trina on these and something clicked. Maybe it was the trucks and maybe it was the fact that Trina said, "You won't turn if you don't move your hips". I turned my hips when I led with one foot and sure enough, I turned!

I still have a long way to go to really feel adept with these but this is the first time in a while that I've actually felt like maybe I do have the stuff to do this derby thing after all! I now have a new thing to work on at open skates so I'm pretty excited.

Lead with the foot.
Stay low.
Twist your hips.

I'm clearly built like a blocker and now I'm starting to grow the seeds of the blocker I may become. Good practice!

Stranger in a strange land

Tonight I attended a practice with Appleton, Wisconsin's Paper Valley Roller Girls. Before practice I went to an open skate at Skater's Edge. It was substantially less busy than Roller Kingdom typically is. They have a nice, polished wood floor and I envied the fact that their derby track is permanent - tape that has been lacquered over!


PVRG is a WFTDA-AL which practices three times a week for two hours each. The league is comprised of A-Level and B-Level travel teams. They do most of their stretching while skating, versus NHRD which does most of its stretching in the middle. They have a head coach and, tonight, had another coach/manager off skates.

It was a small crew of about 12 skaters and two refs (the league has about 35 active skaters) so they had loads of space on the track for drills. Some of the drills that I remember include:

• Paceline weaving drill but the person in front drops back and weaves their way backward through the pack.
• Plow stop partner drill where the "blocker" was to literally sit on the jammer and come to a full plow stop
• Line hopping drill where they skated on the outside line of the track, hopping from foot to foot
• Jumping drill where objects of different heights were placed around the track and skaters jumped the biggest one the felt comfortable with
• "Awareness" drill where league packs up and the coach skates behind them holding up X number of fingers. The whole league has to look and call out how many fingers. Coach holds his hand in a different place each time.
• Group drill with four members. Two defensive blockers, one offensive blocker and a jammer. Defensive blockers go first and offensive blocker and jammer follow. Version #1 - OB sweeps DB to the outside to allow J to get through. Version #2 - same deal but DB get swept to the outside.
• Relay Race. Four groups, one in each corner. Each team member skates two laps and then hands off to the next skater.

They only scrimmage one night a week and they don't do stats for their scrimmages because I don't think they have enough leftover people. Everyone was very nice and friendly. They are expected to graduate from the apprentice program in June, just like us (SO EXCITING!) 
 
In other news, they had really good prices on wheels and bearings at the skate shop so I picked up a set of Radar Pures and Bones Redz for outdoor wheels. Also, the article that I wrote for the Greater NH Sports paper finally got published! It's cool to see my name and work in print! 

Potentially practicing with the Fox Cityz Foxz tomorrow night, then back to PVRG on Tuesday with an adult open skate on Wednesday night. Busy bee!

A bit of progress...

Today started the fourth week of derby practices. That means we've cycled back around to endurance training. On endurance weeks we spend the first 30 minutes or so of practice doing plyometrics - squats, lunges, mountain climbers, iron mikes, and all sorts of other hellish things that one day won't be quite so hellish.

We did a loooooong drill called "The Black Widow". If it sounds ominous, that's because it is. 30 minutes (apparently it's *supposed* to be 45) of non-stop skating. Things get mixed up - sprints, figure eights, sticky skates, squats,knee-touches - but you're going for 30 minutes. Correction: you *try* to go for 30 minutes.

I made the mistake of putting my Dr. Scholls arch support doohickeys back in my skates thinking they'd help my feet. They didn't. In fact, they made them cramp up faster than ever before. After only a few minutes of skating I had to stop, pull them out, and flex my feet until the cramps went away. The damage had been don't though as my feet were mostly cramped all night. I'm sitting here sipping chocolate milk and writing this and they're still somewhat cramped!

I ended up having to stop a few times during the drill. The good news is that it wasn't because of my back *small victory*. The bad news is that I had to stop. My goal for the next endurance week (three weeks from now) that I won't have to stop during the drill. I tried to concentrate on skating low but keeping my torso more upright to ease the back cramps I've been having. It seemed to work, although the three advil I took an hour before practice may have contributed as well.

The back thing I know will be ongoing until I get into better shape. My immediate stumbling block appears to be transitions. I can skate forward and I can sort of skate backward, but moving between the two is eluding me. I seem to be able to do them while standing still but as soon as I try them while rolling I just end up stopping myself. I guess I have my work in open skates cut out for me for a while!

Six practices in...

After three weeks I am pleased to say that I am still in one piece, although not progressing as fast as I would like to be. We (the January class of freshies) have started to learn some "derby skills" like swoops, Johnny Rockets (the non-contact variety for us), hip whips, and pushes.

Tuesday evening was a great small-group practice as it was made optional due to snow. Me, FM Kiersten, and FM Jesenik represented the freshmeat and there was a nice selection of old stinky meat on hand to help out. We did our first pack skating and I finally think I'm getting the mechanics of "eight on the floor" - where you propel yourself without lifting your skates off the ground. We did a really fun drill where we lined up and hip whipped ourselves from the back of the pack to the front of the pack. I was a little timid at first and not really pulling on the person in front of me but I caught on after about three or four people.

My back continues to be my achilles heel (if that makes any sense). I feel like I have the mechanics of what we've learned so far down, or close to down but I can only sustain things like low pack skating for five minutes or so and then my lower back completely cramps up. Betty has said that is about lack of core strength (and the extra belly weight probably doesn't help) so after I finish writing this I'm off to clear a spot in the living room to do some crunches - there may be a big exercise ball purchase in my future.

If I understood correctly, after twelve practices the freshies are eligible to choose a derby name. I'm halfway there and to be honest, it feels like twelve practices (six weeks) would be early. I don't feel like I've done enough to earn one yet. I'm completely serious about derby - it's fantastic - and I plan to do it until I can't (and then ref or volunteer once I can't) but I don't fully *feel* like a derby girl yet. Maybe it will be better after I pass my level one assessment. Maybe it won't be until I don't have to drop out of a drill because it feels like my back is seizing up. I know that eventually I will feel like I'm getting there, I just don't quite yet.

I have been known to obsess over things I'm excited about. I have to remind myself that I'm new and people might not always want to hear my ideas for things. I feel like I should spend a bit more time with my ears open and my mouth closed but sometimes ideas leak out anyway. I work on little things on my own and file them away for a time when I feel comfortable asking the league or committee if they would find xxxxxx project or idea helpful. The last thing I want to be is the annoying new person who won't shut up. I just get really excited, that's all!

I will talk about roller derby to anyone who expresses the slightest interest. I've told at least five  people (three of them complete strangers) about our next recruitment night. I get warm fuzzies when I'm able to put to rest some people's miconceptions or outdated ideas of what modern WFTDA derby is. "Do you skate around punching people in the face?" Nope. "You must have to really big and rough to do that!" Nope. Small and rough works too! I went to hang a Ball flyer in a salon in Milford and ended up writing the website and recruitment night information on a card for one of the stylists. It's infectious in a completely awesome way. We need a derby pandemic!

I find these days that even though practices are mentally tough for me (I'm very hard on myself when I don't perform where I *think* I should be) I have a great time and look forward to them every week with a mix of giddiness and a pinch of worry. I can't get on skates enough. I get frustrated when I try to go to a Saturday morning open skate and the parking lot is so full I can't get a space and can't skate. It sounds like I'm going to miss the Sunday open skate since I'm helping out with the photoshoot tomorrow and we're going out for beverages after.

Six practices in and I'm still loving derby and the lovely ladies of NHRD that make it so awesome! <3

Ow.

I'm not yet sure if it's derby fail or a derby badge of honor but I have managed to acquire my first injury, three practices in. We were doing a relay where we'd skate to one end of the rink and do a baseball slide, then skate back and do a four-point slide. Rinse. Repeat.

It was my second or third trip down the rink. I did the slide (which I feel like I'm getting better at - got to remember to keep the hip up!) and then went to get up. Standing fail. My quads were getting a bit spaghetti-ish and I went to push off my toe stop and lost my balance. I could almost hear Blue Danube playing in my head as my feet went out from under me and I landed hard on the floor.

I managed to avoid the tailbone but I got the wind knocked out of me. I thought that was all until I got up and started to skate back. My lower abs were KILLING me and my right hip felt really tight. Everyone told me to just take it slow and stop if I need to. I'm not as good as I should be at the "stopping when I need to bit" - I haven't been since basic training when my stubbornness led to a nasty pelvic stress fracture. I did another two trips through and then had to stop. It felt like there was a lead weight attached to my right foot.

While the rest of the freshies learned transitions, I had to sit and watch (or risk making things worse). Bettie got me an ice pack (thank you Bettie :-D) and I tried to stay still, and later stretch a bit. I'm having Ian get me a heating pad (and maybe some of those sticky heat packs that Vicious mentioned) tomorrow at lunch. I think I'm going to need them. The unofficial diagnosis is a pulled groin. Who knew that the groinular region extended up into your abs? Certainly not I!

I think one of the most frustrating things for me so far has been the current limitations of my own body. I'm very competitive and want to be able to "hang with the big girls" but it feels like I'm trapped in a fat suit. I remember being flexible and considerably more in-shape than I currently am. I keep thinking to myself, "I should be able to do this!" but my body just won't let me for the time being. I *will* get better at this stuff, I know. I'm just an impatient bitch and I want it to be better NOW!

Everyone in NHRD is just awesome. When I skated back after the fall, the entire league cheered for me. It was both embarrassing and completely awesome at the same time. Emabrrassing because I feel like I shouldn't be having this hard of a time. Completely awesome because it just further backs up everything I have ready about the camaraderie and sisterhood of derby.

I <3 you guys :-)