Some you like, some you don't...

I think I'm just going to have to accept that sometimes I'm going to love the hell out of a practice and other times I'm just going to want to kick it in the face until it bleeds all over the place.

Thursday practice was not my thing. Well, parts of it were pretty great, but a few things made me so beyond pissed that I wanted to scream, cry, run away, and maybe punch someone in the face (emotions may have been amplified due to lady things). There was only one other fresh meat girl at practice on Thursday so we just joined up with the vets to do the drills they were doing. Thursday was all about endurance. We did a lot of paceline drills (calling inside/outside is what made me so pissed if you can believe it - two different people telling me opposite ways to do an insanely simple thing, argh!) and another drill that was pure hell. In the drill we would full out sprint for a minute and then follow it up with a minute of a skill (some skills were: backwards skating, plow stops, knee falls, tomahawk stops, lateral hops, lunges, and some other things I'm forgetting). It was a very long and very hard drill. I was glad when it was over, but very proud of myself for not dying. :D

Saturday practice was much better. I had gotten rid of the pissed feeling and the girl I was sort of angry at wasn't there, so it was all good. The theme of the Saturday practice was footwork. We started with a few off skates things and then put on skates for some hopping, grapevines, weaving, ducking, and tomahawks. We then got on the track for some roller skating dodgeball. It sounds scary, but it was seriously the most fun I've ever had. It starts out with everyone skating on the track and several people have balls that they throw at the skaters. If you get hit below the knees then you are out (and can throw the balls at the remaining skaters). We did the dodgeball game in a pack, too and it was really cool how the pack still stayed together even though a bright pink ball would be running through our feet.

The next "game" we played was Last Man Skating. With everyone an equal distance apart from each other, we skated around the track once. After the first lap, it was your job to knock someone down or get them off of the track. I lasted all of 1 minute the first time we played and then stuck through almost until the end on the second round. I took some pretty good hits and managed to stay planted until one of the amazeballs vets took me down. She told me she was going to give me a few laps and then she'd be coming for me, and she sure did! I don't think I would have ever been able to get low enough to withstand her hit. I fell hard and felt nothing. I LOVE MY GEAR!

After a few other games and activities we moved on to some scrimmaging (eeeek!!!). In one of the jams I actually had a really good block and was super proud of myself. In another jam I got to be the jammer and I actually made it through the pack a few times (although the vets were being gentle on us freshies!). It was very rewarding and yet scary at the same time!

Tonight's practice was also great (even though it only lasted an hour and a half). We weren't able to be at the rink tonight, so we practiced at the nearby park. All day I was dragging my feet and thinking that I didn't want to go to practice. Several times I even considered posting in the team's group that I wasn't going to make it, but I decided I would go. I wasn't really in the mood for trail skating, but we didn't do that. We went to a section of the trail that the team practiced on when they first started and didn't have a real practice space.

We did a paceline drill and then the freshies went off to the side with our fresh meat coach (I was so glad he was back!). This was another practice where it was me and one other fresh meat girl (although the other fresh meat girl changes from practice to practice - it'll be a miracle if everyone actually comes to practice!). We practiced one foot glides and then learned how to do a hip twist. I think I'm getting there while on my left foot, but as always, gliding on my right foot is just sucky. Oddly enough I'm better on my right foot when trying to hip twist. I think that because I'm so focused on getting my body to be correct I don't think about gliding on my uncooperative foot as much. We did a bit of weaving around some shoes, and that was that. There wasn't much to do in an hour and a half and it was getting dark, so practice was over.

I am so glad that I went to practice. Tonight was the first time I just didn't want to go to practice and forcing myself to go was the right thing. Also, I think the one fresh meat girl that was at practice tonight was quitting (or having some sort of emotional problem) when I left. A few weeks ago I was confident that we would all make it through fresh meat and now girls are just disappearing and dropping. It's pretty upsetting.

4:58 and Jumping

Last night during practice we did the 25-in-5 again. I was doing pretty great in the beginning and our ref, who was timing, said, “Good time!” when I had reached 5 laps. After about the 7th lap, I felt like I was slowing down. I don’t know what it was, but I felt extremely exhausted (it didn’t help that we had just done some off-skates stuff that made my legs feel like noodles). I pushed through and tried to just finish instead of collapse right on the track.

When I finished, I was told that my time was 4:58!! Sure, that’s only a 9 second improvement from my best time, but it’s less than five minutes. I was really stunned because I thought for sure my time would be around 6 minutes. Another thing that made it easier was that there was only one other fresh meat girl on the track with me. I really dislike passing people when we’re doing our 25-in-5, so I usually pace behind another person because it allows me to remember which lap I’m on (I lose count almost every time, especially if anyone yells anything to me – and I have ended up doing an extra lap before).

Anyway – the rest practice last night. So our fresh meat coach will be coming back, but he wasn’t at last night’s practice because he was having car issues. *sigh of relief* One of our skaters (she got MVP jammer at the last bout) was running the practice along with her boyfriend, who skates for a men’s team and was part of the old coaching staff. Oddly enough, there were only two of us fresh meat for the practice. One of the girls has officially dropped out for money and time reasons (but she had missed a lot of practice), another two or three don’t come in all that often because of their jobs, and another has school on Tuesday nights, so she usually comes late (but didn’t come at all last night).

She was going to torture us with some off-skates stuff, but since there were only two of us, she had to do it differently. We’d done crunches and leg lifts in the team stretching exercises after the initial jog, so we didn’t have to do more of those. We did some frog hops, suicides, high knees, and planks ; also, we did do a couple of new things:

• Teabagging Squats – okay, there is a real name for them but I can’t remember, so they are officially teabagging squats to me. You’d get into a squat and hold it and then you’d bend up and down like you’re teabagging someone. The first set had 5 teabags, then 10, and then 11. It was a really great exercise and I’m going to try do it at home, I’m surprised I’m not sore from this one.
  
• Squat Hops - Basically like the three hops and a squat but with one big hop rather than three
  
• Squat with leg movement - No idea what to call this one, but we were in a squatting position and we would tap one leg forward and then back. Yeah, I can’t even explain it, lol
  
• Leg Lifts - Standing on one foot and bringing the other leg up and then down without letting it touch the floor. This one helped create noodle legs since we did a ton of them.

After that she had us show her our falls and stops, I totally dorked up one of my 180s and another of my baseball slides – both on my left side, of course. I told her that we were still having trouble with left footed t-stops so we worked on those. The other fresh meat girl is now pretty good at them, but mine just blow hardcore. I can’t bring my left foot up and when I get it in the right place I don’t stick it down hard enough. Then we did plow stops. I’m feeling pretty comfortable with them and I love the sound a plow stop makes!

After that we moved onto some tomahawk stops, or rather, the basic turning around to get to a tomahawk. The guy, J, was helping me out while Y was helping the other fresh meat. The big mistake I keep making is that my left foot just wants to hang out somewhere else than where it should be. J even asked me at one point, “What is up with your left foot?” It just doesn’t do what I want it to do! I want it to turn around naturally, but the only way I am going to get it to be in line and not widely spaced out is to pick it up and turn it around to match my right foot. Rather than picking up my whole skate to turn it, I’ve started to get better at just lifting up half of it and turning it. The only thing I can do at this point is practice, practice, practice until I can do them right.

The other exciting thing we did was JUMPING! We did some hops on Saturday, but we did some actual jumping this time. The really exciting part is that J is basically amazing at jumps. He’s not quite Quadzilla, but I’ve seen him jump over 2 or 3 people, get 3+ feet of air, and he can go from a standstill to a fast skating 360 jump in a second. Not saying that Y isn’t amazing at jumping, she can jump ridiculously high.

The first thing we tried was jumping over a line on the floor. Once I was comfortable doing that, I moved to jumping over a broomstick handle. Once I made that handle my bitch (as Y put it), I moved to some downed cones. After the downed cones, J put a shoe on top of the downed cones put together (see the crummy drawing below) and I did that a few times. Except one of the times I hit the shoe with my skate and it fell off the cones. The last jump I tried was two cones standing together and upright. I did not clear them. In fact, I fell pretty spectacularly (last night I fell a ton, I have no idea what was up with me).



We joined the vets shortly after that and did a drill that I’m sure has a name, but I’m too lazy to look it up. We were separated into two groups of six with the slowest up front and in a tight paceline (physically keeping your hand on the person in front of you at all times) we skated 5 laps and then got off the track. Then the other group skated their 5 and we got on the track to skate 4 laps, then they did their 4, then we did three, and so on.

It was a good practice, but the lack of structure and the fact that there were only 2 of us made it feel kinda long (which has never happened at practice before). I’m hoping that Thursday’s practice has more fresh meat because just having two people is not awesome.



Apologies to anyone actually reading this blog; it’s more for me and a way to talk through and remember what I do from week to week. Once I get started talking I can’t really stop.

Lesson Learned

from Fresh Meat Otter

Yeah, I started a tumblr yesterday. I really like Roller Derby Otter, but most things don't apply to me since I'm just a freshie. So behold, I have created Fresh Meat Otter. I've made about 10(?) of them so far, and here's my favorite -



So anyway, to the point of my post and the graphic up at the top. Apparently Saturday practices aren't that well attended (last week was the exception), so we got to strap on our skates. Because I thought today would just be another day of land drills, I didn't even think to bring my skates. Honestly, it didn't even cross my mind. So after we did about an hour of off-skates training, I was able to race home, grab my bag and race back (I did it in 8 minutes! Hell yes!). Once I got back to the rink I had to take my outdoor wheels off and put my indoor wheels back on. I did them wrong, too. I have two kinds of wheels and I'm used to them when I skate. I put the wheels on wrong and my skating just felt sort of off (as evidenced by the almost!spill during laps).

All in all it was a pretty okay practice, but I didn't walk out of there as exhausted as I usually do. Hopefully tomorrow's outdoor skate will put me in my place. Also, I'm currently wishing I had a full set of good wheels rather than two half sets of average wheels. It'd be nice not to have to think of which are which. :P

Stop looking at me, swan!

When I got home from practice last night I was pretty sweaty, gross, and already feeling the soreness (advil was wearing off). I made a quesadilla and my brother made me a banana orange smoothie. After eating, a nice hot bath was the only thing I wanted, so I rummaged through a closet and found an old thing of Epsom Salt. Of course, the swan thing reminded me of that scene in Billy Madison. I took a nice bubble bath and relaxed and then completely crashed out.

I had an awesome dream. In my dream I was able to do perfect derby stance and my squats were awesome. I woke up and instantly felt bummed because I know for a fact that my derby stance sucks and I can't hold a squat for very long. *sadface forever*

The last thirty minutes of practice last night, we joined the team while they did some off-skates training. We did some push-ups, planks (dear god, they are awful), and two other exercises that I don't know the name for. The worst part, in my opinion, was the low walks that went from one end of the rink to the other. I think I was one of the last to finish that one (although I will note that the two freshies that are less fit than me sat out for the 30 minutes with the team, usually they're the ones that lag behind in our drills). On the way back down to the other side of the rink we did frog hops (which I loathe). I was tired and sore, but one of the girls was nice enough to stick around with me and another freshmeat girl and make us finish. She told us we could do it and would count to three and we all jumped. It was really awesome of her!!

I was going to use my new outdoor wheels this morning, but I've already had a bit of a late start and I have other things I have to be doing. Also, Florida is stupidly hot. I just checked weather.com for my area and it says, "Dangerous heat index. Outdoor exposure should be limited."

Also, the team is playing in Ormond Beach on Sunday, and I agreed to NSO. My original plan this weekend was to go to Orlando Saturday evening for a bout in Deland and then skate with Heather and Itzel on Sunday morning. Since practice is from 3-6 on Saturdays, I won't make it to the bout on time, so I think I'll trail skate with them on Sunday morning, shower in the afternoon, drive to Ormond Beach to NSO, and then drive back home from there.

My First Day (Off Skates Training)

aka - the day before the most horrible soreness of my life (I know this because the soreness is already creeping in)

Fresh meat here starts out with a few weeks of off-skate training, also known as hell. IT WAS AWESOME.

We all started out with a 5 minute jog and stretching (everyone does this, it wasn't just us), and did one of the things I fear most: the introduction thing. Basically it's the thing that takes place in every class and makes me freak out hardcore. You're in a circle and you say your name and something about yourself. Uuuugh, agonizing.

Anyway, before I get distracted, let me tell you what we got to do during our training tonight (not in the right order, because it all blurred together) -

• Suicides (4, I think?)
  
• Grapevines (4 across the rink's width)
  
• Lunges (60 total, 30 each leg)
  
• Frog Hops (lots)
  
• Low Walks (4 across the rink's width)
  
• Run Backwards (6 across the rink's width)
  
• Chair/Jump (more than I ever wanted to do)
  
• Three Hop One Squat
  
• 5 point Hops (?) (hop back, middle, front, middle, left, middle, right, middle, back middle - 10 or so of these)
  
• One Leg Jumps (maybe 15-20 each leg)
  
• Side to Side Jumps (so many of these! They were my favorite)
  
• Heel Taps (from derby stance)
  
• Toe Taps to Jumping Jacks
  
• Push-ups (10 of these just for me, because I knocked over one of the cones!)
  
• Crab Walk (2 across the rink's width)
  
• Some weird exercise that I was bad at and don't know the name for
  
• Burpees (30)
  
• Crunches (30)

There are probably a lot of other things that I'm forgetting, but maybe it's for the best. I loved every minute of it though (okay, I didn't like the minutes that I was doing burpees. That exercise can go die in a fire. Other than that, I caught myself smiling several times. I'm definitely not in the best shape of all of the girls (I will be forever jealous of the Firefighter girl because she is AMAZING), but I think I did crazy awesome and I can't wait to do it again.

As I said during the training, "I lost 30 pounds of fat, I just need to gain 30 pounds of muscle and I'll be set."