    videos  |
It has been a mad mad couple of weeks.
TRAINING Training has been awesome. Apart from lots of practice for the yellow star (read: endurance *groans*) we got to do our first scrimmage as white stars. IT WAS AMAZING ! it was “non contact” but still soooo much fun. just quietly…there was some contact but shhh :) I got to be a Dolly for the night and I now have so much more respect for jammers then I did already, which was a boat load btw. I always thought jammers looked pretty casual when they were skating around after the pack after making it through. how wrong I was. That shit is TOUGH ! I fell over on my first jam but on my second I sneaked through the pack twice and then called it off. I had always wanted to make the calling off a jam hand signals legitimately so I can now sleep a little more soundly at night :) If I could shave another 10 or so kgs off this booty of mine and improve my fitness and speed, I think I would love to try to be a jammer. I honestly see myself as more of an inside line blocker… but we’ll see ;) Last week we also got treated to a skate maintenance lesson by my first SSRD crush Bonnie Crash. I now know exactly what all the parts of my skates are called and I think I may even be able to pull them apart and put them back together again if I had to. That’s IF I had to, there’s no way I’m just doing it for funsies. Bonnie also recently offered to let me borrow some narrow wheels, lowboys to be exact, and I’m really liking them. I feel a little quicker/more agile and much less likely to lock wheels with someone. I’m just going to try them on the Carrum surface first before I decide which hardness, sorry durometer, I’m going to go out and buy with my tax return :) I LOVE this time of year ! YELLOW STAR TEST The yellow star is tommorow. I would love to make it through. It means I’ll get drafted to a team and get to update the snazzy white star to yellow on my helmet. Some days I’m confident and other days I’m not. The thing I am worried most about is Satan’s Mattress: Lying down feet against the wall, whistle blows, get up as fast as you can and baseball slide into the opposite wall without slamming into it. Rinse and repeat for a few minutes. The getting up and down quickly makes me feel a little dizzy after about a minute so I think I’ll just pace myself and concentrate on my baseball slide form. The other nerve wrecking thing is weaving pace lines, I can do them but I know my form is not always up to scratch. Here’s hoping I can scrape by on my body bridges, push ups, sit ups and endurance.. wow I never thought I would be relying on push-ups to get me over the line. BOUT FOR BLOOD : FIRST SSRD PUBLIC BOUT Seriously amazing night. The venue was amazing, the crowd was massive and enthusiastic and the action was seriously nail biting. All the girls played awesomely and was so good to see them all out there for the first time. I was blocker penalty timing on the night and I had my hands pretty full some times. Bad Dollys ;). Lesson of the night : YELL LOUDER! A big well done to the Cutthroat Charmers who took the game 112 to 100. I really thought the Dolly Rogers were going to steal victory towards the end. I can’t wait for next time in October to see a few more South Sea girls in the mix. ROLLERAMA FUNDRAISER As some of you have heard, one of the sweetest derby girls I know, Thunderhorse (aka Heather Dixon), was victim of a house fire last week which burninated pretty much everything she owned, including taking her 2 beloved kittys. To help raise funds to get her back on track there will be a fun skate night at Caribbean Rollerama on Thursday the 23rd of September. More details to come but save the date! A big love tap to everyone that has dug deep so far to help out heather and her hero dog Ceaser. Well that is it for now. Hopefully I’ll have some positive news by tommorow night, but if I don’t make it this time there is always next time and the time after that and so on and so on. I will get there. <3 blitz |
Archive for the ‘Fresh meat boot camp 2.0’ Category
Skatespotting : Choose derby
Monday, August 30th, 2010White star : The final skatier
Monday, June 28th, 2010  |
These are the voyages…*cough* sorry, got a little carried away…
So white star test, the bane of my existence for 7 or so months, was finally upon us. I was fine up until the morning at which point I became a bundle of nerves reminiscent of the exact situation I was in last year. So much nervous energy.. I couldn’t sleep in or sit still around the house. I just wanted to get it all over with. We started out basically stretching and practicing everything that was going to be on the test to warm us all up. I have to admit I didn’t really push myself too hard at this point because a) I didn’t want to wear myself out and b) I didn’t want to hurt myself before the test had even started. And then came the test *gasp* Now from what I remember (which is probably not 100% accurate) my results went something like this : ENDURANCE Laps: 25 laps in 5 minutes = 3/5 – Increased fitness will help with number of laps. Last time I got 19.5 so at least I can actually see some progress there. Stance and cross-overs suffered due to me being so tired. Increased fitness should in theory help me improve everything to do with endurance. STOPS T-stops = 4/5 – Possibly need to get a little lower. FALLS 1-point = 3/5 Needs a quicker recovery, be in better stance. JUMPS Basic jump: 4/5 – Need to increase balance so I don’t seem as shaky when landing. GRAND TOTAL 3.44(3.4) out of 5 WHITE STAR PASS! WOOTLES :D While we were waiting for the results we played some tag games and practiced some whipping, lots of fun. There was a pretty good vibe going around. Everyone seemed so relieved the test was over. Wifey had organized a dinner booking down the road for everyone after the test which was a great idea. It was really good to sit around with everyone from the coaches to other white star takers and completely stuff our faces, relax a bit and totally stink out all the other punters. Awesome. So this means that just under a year of me buying my first pair of derby skates I am officially in a roller derby league. I’m not sure it will fully sink in until the first training session but I’m just going to relax for a little bit now… maybe… anyone for rollerama?? :D The good news (besides the obvious) is that I don’t have to write a boot camp experience for the third time. From this point on everything is going to be pretty new to me. This means more challenges, probably more tears but hopefully a lot more progression towards perhaps, one day, being able to play roller derby in an official capacity. I really hope that everyone that didn’t make it the first time goes back for the resit in a couple of weeks. I know how crappy it feels to not make it the first time. It sucks hard. Just quietly, I was pretty upset the first time, a lot more then I probably communicated to people. I felt completely defeated. Honestly though, I have no idea where I would be now if I had just given up the first time. Derby is not easy, it’s not ever going to be easy and if it was easy I’m pretty sure I wouldn’t be all that interested. Stay with it girls. It won’t be the same without you. See you soon <3 |
Boot camp week 5: The empire skates back
Sunday, June 20th, 2010   videos   |
BOOTY CAMP
This week was a full recap of everything we can expect in the test.
We also did some weaving again and some practise starts for jammers.
I think i’m ready for the test this time. In hindsight last time I really don’t think I was, mentally or physically. I could do most things but I wasn’t confident enough and it was more of a hit and miss on skills like plow stops and jumps. But as much fun as bootcamp was this week it kinda didn’t match up to the experience of… THE GREAT SOUTHERN SLAM IT WAS AMAZING !! It was also my first time in Adelaide and for a major city it sure is small and sleepy. Everything was in walking distances and the locals couldn’t wait to say hello to you so badly they feel the need to scream out of car windows every 5 minutes, day or night. The event was held at the show grounds taking up 2 pavilions with 4 tracks all on the go at the same time. It was pretty hard to decide which bouts to watch and which ones we would have to miss but obviously the Victorian teams took priority along with securing delicious merch. I spent way more money then I intended to but my derby tee collection just got an awesome boost. It was great seeing skaters of various skill levels all jumping in and having a go. So many girls were having their first ever bout here which I think was awesome. If it had been me, I don’t think I would have made it out of the bathroom. It was alot of fun watching some of the girls I did boot camp with last time in their first challenge bouts. Seriously impressive stuff. The amount of derby love was overwhelming, so many really cool people all together and enthusiastically talking about derby related topics, everyone was so positive and friendly, it was just the greatest atmosphere to be in. It was so hard to watch the final against Sun State Roller Girls and the VRDL. The skill level of the players was amazing, so many strategies I have never actually seen in front of my face before. the best word I can use to sum the game up is INTENSE. It was so good to see the Victorian girls take it though, It was the perfect ending to and awesome trip…well besides the after party, but that’s another story.. If they run another great southern slam next year i’ll be there in a heartbeat whether I can skate or not. I took some photos and videos that are linked to over on the left. but please be warned that the quality is not great due to an iphone being my medium. You may also want to turn the volume down on the videos as the screaming may just blow your mind..literally. SO NEXT WEEK… white star test !!! *nerves*. fingers crossed it won’t end in tears or injury and there won’t be another emo blog post incoming…wish me luck :) |
