Blitzkrieg Deluxe » roller derby

SEMPER SKATE !

blitzkrieg deluxe — Mon, 16 Aug 2010 11:37:47 +0000

CAUTION : LONG BADLY STRUCTURED POST AHEAD.

So initially I was actually planning on writing a post after every training session until our yellow star test. I now realize this was a tad ambitious so I figure I’ll do a training summery every 3 or 4 weeks to cover any new stuff we’ve done and then post about other derby related happenings. So here’s a run down of all the stuff we’ve been doing over the last few weeks :)

I had my first SHED training session, quite exciting and bloody cold. I finally got to experience first hand the notorious Dandenong training ground. I had been told in the past that the floor was slippery as hell, well that has certainly changed, I couldn’t plow stop to save my life! One thing was still holding true however, the closeness of the the track to the wall. I almost met intimately with said wall a number of times during the night.

We basically went through the yellow star test requirements (which I’ll hopefully be sitting on the 31st of this month *cold sweats* ) This entailed:

60 second body bridge, 50 sit-ups and 20 push ups. Blergh I made the 60 second body bridge..just.. but I’m going to need to work on those push ups…

Endurance : 1 min @ 50% capacity, 2 min endurance working on form, 1 min break and then 5 min endurance with a warm down… I was feeling pretty tired after this. I think I performed about as well as I did for white star but I need a clicker to count my laps because my head always loses track and starts looping thinking music.

Wide weaves and falls. I think I almost have the weaves down going in either direction.

Squat skating : 2 mins of on/off squatting according to whistle blows and then 1 min full squat while skating, 1 min break and then another 1 min of skating in full squat. This as I’m sure you can imagine was the definition of pain.

Next up was my favourite game: satan’s mattress. I nearly died….apparently this is on the test and we have to do it for 2 mins… dear god no ! or should that be dear satan no !?

After drinking a litre of water it was time for some weaving pace-lines. I’ve come to enjoy weaving pacelines, they used to terrify me. I always worried about knocking people over of getting in someone else’s way. I find myself much more comfortable now and able to use speed control when I never really could before. Even with a belly full of water making swoosh swoosh noises I still made it through without stacking.

The final drills of the night were the most fun. we were split into 2 groups taking it in turn to be a blocking pack and a jamming pack. as jammer’s we first had to make it through the pack by stepping through and the second time we had to try and make it through at speed. This was so much fun !! I like blocking but jamming is so cool. I really don’t know if I’ll ever get to be a proper jammer, I need better fitness, a leaner booty and a little more confidence but right now I’m loving these drills.

Lesson of the evening, get a smaller mouth-guard ! I was chewed up pretty bad this week for again not having my mouth-guard in properly.. my fault completely..pretty sure i’ll be vigilant from now on, even if I am choking on my own drool.

*PAUSE*

See just after I wrote this up we had another training session with a buttload more new stuff..so I started writing that one up…and then there was another training session and I started to write that one up and then…I’m sure you see where I’m going here…too much jibber jabber !

In summery, the training sessions up to now have been alot different to boot camp and they are a hell of alot more fun. We’ve learnt so much that I can’t distinguish the individual sessions but a run down on some of the stuff we we have done up until now is:

making and breaking walls, surge blocking. weaving pacelines, blocking pacelines, baton passing, transition stop races. The most fun so far would have to be the endless jammer drills where we have 2 packs, one pack blocks and one pack filters through jamming. So fun and so scary.

When we’re not covering so much new stuff all at once I’ll break it down a little more but right now my head is swimming with new drills..and dreams of what kind of player I’ll end up being.

Besides the training on Tuesday’s I’ve been helping with more NSO jobs. blocker penalty timing! I get to sit in a chair, wield 2 stop watches and wait for people to rack up the penalties and then yell at them to go back and play. With great power comes great responsibility ! Unfortunately I only seem to get one or 2 people to time per scrimmage session..Bring back the biff ladies !

IN OTHER NEWS : OH MAH GAWD I got new skates. BIG GREEN ONES. The wife has named them snot wheels and who am I to argue with her, she totes wears the pants. I decided to just go with rebels again because I’ve been really happy with mine. They are getting a bit ratty which is why I wanted a new pair but overall I’ve never had so much as a blister from them so i don’t see why I would want another boot…I may however get an aluminium plate at some stage in the future. Big shoutout to wayne at derbyskates.com.au and J-F for helping me out. I got a really good deal on the skates as well as the bearings and wrist guards and I got them all within a week and a half *feint*

So I’ve finally had a chance to sit still and write a blog entry… expect more soon, hopefully not as stupidly long. The yellow star test is in two weeks so I’m once again soiling myself…oh and i’m nervous too :) I will be starting my push-up and sit-up routine at home tomorrow I swears ! *hurrrrrrr*

OH OH MOST IMPORTANTLY The first ever SSRD public bout is on the 28th. CLICK HERE for more information and score yourself some tickets ! There is also a promo video here . It’s going to be an awesome night and I get to time the blocker penalties for reals *gasp* Hope to see you there !

Phew epic post. If i could give you a strawberry freddo frog for making it this far I would!

xx BeeDee (lol…just thought I would try that out…fail)

IN SPACE NO ONE CAN HEAR YOU SKATE

blitzkrieg deluxe — Thu, 22 Jul 2010 09:09:40 +0000

videos

She finally did it, she finally got her arse to a proper white star training session. Now I don’t feel quite as guilty claiming to be a derby girl. Still I have a lot of attendance to make up if I want to qualify to sit my next test. In my defence a bad bout of tonsillitis and birthdays did seem like pretty good excuses at the time.

Anyhoos…

FIRST TRAINING SESSION

Before we were even allowed to get on the rink, we new white stars had to first pass the basic written rules test. I was fairly nervous about this during the week as I had still not sat down and read all the rules. I was just hoping to get by with what i’ve learnt along the way in the last 12 months. Luckily for me it turns out I knew more than I thought. Not sure on what my mark was but i was just happy to get out on the track.

It was fairly intimidating at first, not that I was made to feel that way by anyone of coarse, I just was a little overcome by the feeling of being a little noob in a big pond of total awesomeness.

The skating was amazing fun. It was so cool to not be doing to same old drills over and over and over again. I wasn’t as nervous as I thought I was going to be but I think that’s mainly down to everyone was super friendly and helpful.

So here’s the 411 on what we did.

1.PACE LINES

From the back of the pack jog (HUH?!?) up the inside line to the front. I was actually a little scared of this but doing little steppy steppys wasn’t so bad, until I got yelled at for not having my mouth guard in. SAFETY FAIL SHAME !
Weaving from the back of the pack to the front between each person.
Weaving and faking from the back of the back to the front between each person, I took this is a combo of the first two so I kinda did a little jog before I weaved and then just after. not sure if I was doing it right or not but I had my mouth guard in this time. A minor win!

By the end of this I was pretty buggered. the line was so long it took ages to get to the front.

2.MAKING WALLS
We were paired up with a more experienced skater (<3 hipi) and were told about the basics of making a wall to stop other players getting through the pack. lessons learned include :

Skate low and wide and take up as much room as possible.
Try to close any gaps
Watch behind to make sure you know where the jammer is coming from.
Don’t push back with your arms to stop a player coming through.

3. WATERFALLS
2 people became a group of 3 and we worked on keeping a wall, while rotating players around making sure the gaps were covered at all times.

4. BLOCKING AND JAMMING
3 people together, 1 inside blocker, 1 patrolling blocker and 1 jammer. The aim was for the 2 blockers to stop the jammer getting past.

The inside blocker guarded the inside line with their life.
The patrolling blocker moved around while calling the jammer’s position while also trying to block.
The jammer just tried to get past.

We did this a few times making sure everyone got a crack at each position. I’ve decided i don’t mind inside blocking and the jamming was heaps fun but I’ll probably change my mind about that when theres more than a pack of 2 to deal with.

5. MAKING AND BREAKING WALLS
Skating in 2 teams with packs of 4. (purple and red) we took turns in trying to make walls and break walls. This was fairly nerve wreaking.
As we are only baby white stars, we’re not allowed to make big contact moves so I found it a little confusing as to what were were allowed to do.

That was the last drill for the whiteys for the night. I love the fact that when I played RTCW online, new players had white names, anyone with a white name was considered a noob or a “whitey” because they were so new they couldn’t work out how to change the colour of their name, or play with any skill. It does however feel much cooler calling myself a whitey now even if we are not allowed to scrimmage until we hit yellow star.

So the whiteys did we did a quick warm-down skate, a stretch and got to sit around and watch the higher level skaters do their scrimmage, a worthy compromise. I am seriously equal parts excited and terrified at the prospect of being able to scrim eventually.

I got to try my hand at penalty tracking which I’ve never done before. This was pretty cool. I’ve always wanted to do some NSO activities. Big thanks to Andrew for being so patient every time a purple penalty was called. Pretty sure he would have been sick of me asking “what did he say?” “is this right?” “what was that?”.

NOTE FOR NEXT WEEK: obtain hearing aid so I can hear the coaches and refs and remember to buy my purple and red singlets for team drills. Much love to Bonnie for the sexy loaner for the night <3.

Despite from my truancy on the weekend training front I have still made it to the previous 2 Tuesday sessions. The first was the info night but last weeks was much more fun, It was the SSRD first public bout !! Well semi public, it was for friends and family only but it was still awesome to watch. I was running the merch stand with Megsy for the first half with an army of junior derby queens in the making. It was good volly job here because we could still see all the action. It really got me pretty excited to think that maybe sometime in the next 12 months I’ll be out there as well.

Check out the video on the left of the girls in action and nurse pain grand-slamming it up :D

The first real public bout will be on AUGUST 28TH, more details to come but save the date !

NEXT : Friday night training. woo.

LIVIN’ THE WHITESTAR LIFE

blitzkrieg deluxe — Wed, 07 Jul 2010 12:34:52 +0000

Phew I think it’s pretty much sunk in that I actually made it to my white star. Having said that I still haven’t skated at any training sessions yet.

We are allowed to skate on Fridays and Saturdays right away but not Tuesday scrimmage for a few weeks due to SSRD preparing for and holding their first mini bout.

Unfortunately work held be back last Friday and I couldn’t make the first session and i was away for the Sunday sesh. It’s pretty funny that I’ve been skating so hard to get in and once I’m in I can’t make training… cross my skates that this is not going to be a running trend. Ideally I’ll make all 3 sessions a week. I really need to work on building those delicious derby muscles. nom nom.

We were still allowed to go Tuesday session this week. It was our induction night where we went through the rules, of which there will be a basic test on in 2 week *yikes* Time to put my “work funded” rules set to work. Although from what they asked on the night I seemed to know more then I thought.

While we were not able to skate this Tuesday it was cool to watch some of the SSRD girls hard at work practicing for the family and friends bout next week. We finished up the evening with a league meeting where the ladies went through the new policies while I munched on the Doritos dutifully supplied by my wifey and delicious baked goods supplied by Erika <3

The highlight of the night I have to admit was Alex officially handing my white star sticker for my helmet *cue explosions*. No more artists interpretations for me !

Hopefully next blog post I’ll have something skate related to talk about, praying that it’s not injury related.

Oh SSRD are running a fundraiser on the 30th of July to help raise much needed fundage. It’s an 80’s roller disco being held at skateworld in Carrum. for more information clicky clicky !

WHITE STAR : THE FINAL SKATIER

blitzkrieg deluxe — Mon, 28 Jun 2010 09:27:49 +0000

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.
Cross over form: = 3/5 – appears a little unbalanced.
Derby Stance =3/5 – Need to get lower.

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.
Plow-stops = 4/5 – Shorter stopping distance would be good.

FALLS

1-point = 3/5 Needs a quicker recovery, be in better stance.
2-point = 3/5 Needs a quicker recovery
4-point = 4/5 Probably needs a quicker recovery.

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

BOOTCAMP 4 : LIVE FREE OR SKATE HARD

blitzkrieg deluxe — Mon, 07 Jun 2010 08:48:25 +0000

Will I grow out of using blog titles based on movie sequels? nope and I’m not even sure that I want to.

So this week started well. I managed to scam some printing and binding resources from my place of employment to finally get a copy of the rules organized. I am yet to read them even though they have been officially sitting on my desk at home for a week. I even coloured in the front with pink biro rather then actually do any productive reading. At least I have the guys at work walking around the office making random ref singles… office favourite seems to be “grandslam” so maybe i’ll actually start learning from them.

Rollerama sessions were great as usual apart from me trying my best to do jump 180’s and stacking hard. You know the kind of stack i’m talking about. Your feet fly out forwards from under you and it feels like you’re floating in mid air for hours before you crash to earth butt first. It was pretty embarrassing on a night where there are derby veterans present. However I still went from person to person asking if they saw my uber fail and proudly announcing that I landed on my sidebum.

As an added bonus one of our “crew” won the nightly roll the dice game and I got to share in the spoils…in skittles form…I tasted the rainbow and it was delicious.

Then came boot camp week 4. Poor wifey hurt her bot bot and deemed herself too sore to participate. This meant spending almost 2 hours sitting around watching us noobs with only a bag of peas for company :(

A lot got crammed into this weeks sessions:

SATAN’S MATTRESS: A game/relay type thing where you skate towards a wall and as you get close move into a baseball slide,then flat onto your back while sliding towards the wall but not hitting it with your feet. then waiting for the whistle and getting up and doing it again as fast as you can. REALLY hard work.
WEAVING: Wide weaves and narrow weaves, very strange sensation and a lesson in weight distribution. I’m not very good at narrow weaves but I am better then I used to be.
JUMPS: Starting from jumping a line - to jumping a cup – to finally jumping a box. I never feel quite safe jumping so i’m hoping I will eventually get used to it. I did manage to jump a little box though so *squeals*

Apart from those new things there was heaps of activities recapping everything we have learned so far which was good. We also did some more transitions and sprinting endurance practice. I’m still critically unfit I think so the more of this stuff the better.

OMG HELMET WOOT! The highlight of my week was totally getting my new helmet back from J-F Tranquille. It’s been painted absolutely perfectly. I knew when I asked him initially if he could do a custom helmet for me I would be in good hands. He SOOO delivered! He took my love of Wolfinstein,skulls and Blitzkrieg and made something better then I would have ever imagined. Ok i’ll stop gushing now..but srsly… OMG OMG OMG lols. <3 J-F

So now the wait begins to actually wear it. I figure I will wait till after the white star. I still can't register the name for a while yet but passing the white star (laces crossed) will be enough validation for me!

Quick disclaimer: I’d like to clarify that even though my name and helmet is world war 2 inspired I am totally not a fascist nazi racist jerkface. kthanx.

So there’s no bootcamp this sunday the 13th, which is a bummer, but we’re off to Radalaide instead for the Great Southern Slam. A totally worthy compromise. Reports and badly taken pictures to follow..

BOOTCAMP 3 : THE SKATENING

blitzkrieg deluxe — Mon, 31 May 2010 12:49:24 +0000

So boot camp week 3. I can honestly say this is so much more fun this time around. Half way through i looked at the clock and realised there was only an hour to go and I actually felt sad. I wasn’t sure if we would learn anything new after last time but I was happily proven wrong.

Some of the extra stuff that wasn’t included last boot camp was:

Scissor skating: Practising putting one foot in line with the other and then swapping over. rinse and repeat. The boys looked pretty uncomfortable doing this one.. can’t imagine why.
Transitions: Stepping front to back while moving. While I had picked this up at a class earlier in the year I can’t imagine what I would have done had this been on the last boot camp six months ago. Hmm no wait… I can totally imagine… There would have been tears and maybe something extra in my shorts that wasn’t there earlier.
Baseball slides with quick get ups: Moving from a one knee fall onto your sidebum(is that even a word?!) to basically help you learn not to fall on your tail bone I’ve done that once..pretty sure if I did it again I would implode or something. So a very valuable skill for me to have. I had learnt this previously at a class but not quite the same. This time you use your core so you don’t fall back onto your elbows and you use a quick kick motion to swap your legs over and get up… wow i didn’t explain that very well. next time i’ll try a diagram.
Walking on toe stops for 2 laps: Pretty self explanatory. It hurt my tootsies…

We kinda did a game in the form of pushing and pulling a group around the track. I christened our group the “poo posse” much to the other girls dismay, but we rocked it YEAH ! I’m kinda of glad we didn’t get to play “musical cones” (thanks for the proper name harmin’ :D) because I nearly passed out by the end.

After bootcamp it was time for a post bootcamp bbq. It was delicious. It was really nice hanging with the girls ( and guys ) without being at a skating rink (although thats totally rad too). The best part however, was the discovery of a guide to outdoor skating circa 1970.

The black and white photos simply do not communicate the raw awesomeness of the book. The main guy, who no doubt picked up the skills in ‘Nam judging by his 1000 yard stare, had some spectacular and often unorthodox moves but hey, I won’t judge because I wasn’t there man.. I WASN’T THERE! I too hope one day to to able to jump as high as he…but maybe not reveal quite as much of my anatomy.

After chowing down and watching some xanadu, me and the wife headed home to our respective abodes and the night capped off with the duty of airing out my derby wife’s pads along side mine outside. It’s smelly business this derby caper but I wouldn’t change a thing.

Actually I totally would change the smelly part.

Really looking forward to next week.

THEY SEE ME ROLLIN

blitzkrieg deluxe — Sat, 13 Feb 2010 11:05:08 +0000

so after an 8 week break from skating here i am, back on the wheels. It’s been 2 weeks since my first sesh back with the girls at rollerama. i was not so quietly shitting myself but felt comfortable as the girls pretty much hadn’t skated since the white star test either.

I was pretty happy with the fact that it all came back within the first 15 mins. cross overs, t-stops, plow stops all still doable. i couldn’t wait to start the derby lite training classes on the Thursday.

Thursday rolled around and my body was in for a rude shock. 8 weeks and no exercise to BAM 2 and a half hours of full on skating and manoeuvres. we covered everything we had learnt in the boot camp in one lesson.. madness.. as well as additional baseball slide stop which are pretty fun. As i limped off the floor already sore and covered from head to toe in derby juice (sweat lol) i knew i was already in for a painful few days… i was so right.

The next Thursday my groin was still playing up so i couldn’t do falls but we learnt a new and pretty scary move that i still have a massive amount of work to do on:

the transition : skating forward turn your skates around one at a time so you are facing the other way and stop using your toe stops… eeek. i fail so hard at this but it’s all practise and muscle memory. there was a few variations on this involving jumping but i dared not try them.. not considering the amount of stacks i had already accumulated that night.

so the aim for the moment is to skate casually once a week with the girls (claire and new derby wife bec) and then train on thursday’s in the intermediate class. once I’m a little fitter i will try and fit in another sesh during the week and do some derby recommended workouts which i’ll post here if i have any success with. Also will be attempting to do the 1000 steps weekly as well.

In other news it appears my first choice derby name has been snatched up by an american girl so i have to come up with something different. at the moment i’m tossing around blitzkrieg banshee but i have another few floating around if that doesn’t work.

In my break time i was asked to restyle/update the VRDL wordpress theme which was a bit of fun. I also put my name down for volunteer duties so i will hopefully get to help out at the next bout in march. check the link for more details.

so that’s it for now. the dream is still alive. i think about the sport all the time so i think that’s a pretty good indication that it’s something I’m going to stick with. I’m just waiting for my next paycheck to come in so i can splurge on some new wheels and gaskets.

BOOT CAMP : WHITESTAR TEST

blitzkrieg deluxe — Sun, 29 Nov 2009 11:16:35 +0000

Hooray assessment day !

the air was so thick with nerves you could chew it. everyone was scared shitless, myself included.

i headed over early to get a decent warm up with the 2 becs. we got there, kitted up and paid our monies and got out on the floor. Started out shaky as usual but got down and just tried to keep my mind off the white star test.

We started out stretching and i got possibly the 2 best pieces of news i’d had all day:

1) If we fail today we get to have another shot at in in just over a week
2) We are not being tested on cross-overs in the reverse direction.

At this stage reverse cross overs are the bane of my existence.. i’m just too awkward for them. I felt pretty much the entire group breathe a little bit easier after this announcement. However the relieved smiles were quickly wiped off peoples faces minutes later when it came time to start the actual white star tests. eeep !

So this is how it went down yo! :

STOPS: specifically plow stops and t-stop. I think i did these ok… well by that i mean i stopped and didn’t stack. But my plow stops are something i think i’m going to have to cultivate over a long period of time before they look any good.

FALLS: specifically one knee (each side), double knee and 4 point falls (both knees, wrists and elbows). These again i think i did ok on. Not perfect by any means but i managed to do the one knees on both sides without any major incident, the double knees were ok with one knee going down just before the other and the 4 point.. well it’s not my strong point but they were better than they were last week.. which isn’t saying that much

ENDURANCE: 5 minutes around the track sprinting, focusing on form(stance, cross-overs) and basically trying to do as many laps as possible with 2 – 4 other ladies on the track. omgomgomg i was so scared of this one, especially seeing as i tend to over heat and become a sweaty mess. But it ended up alright i think. I had a few uneasy moments but was able to keep the same brisk-ish pace the whole time with a few crossovers included for good measure… i think. special shout out to peta for yelling out to me and making me panic lol <3

JUMPS: what we had all been dreading. Jumping over cones. This was my major downfall of the day. I DID the jumps and i DIDN’T fall over but the style was ridiculous. Jumps are the thing i am most concerned about but i’m sure i can put in a bit more work on them if i have to.

After jumps it was warm down time and the realisation it was all over. everyone seemed relieved, like a polar opposite of how we were when we came in. the strangest thing was that i just wanted to keep on skating.

All in all i’m not prepared to speculate about whether i’m going to pass or fail. We won’t know for a couple of days most likely so i’m just going to continue skating and try not to think about it (yeah right).

I think the favourite part of my day though was heading over to the local pub with some other lovely freshies to relax, have a drink and a good laugh at ourselves. The bar wench was not impressed with the stench apparently which provided many lols.

I wish all the girls that were there today the best of luck and hope to be skating with them again very soon. Also the coaches were awesome, every week we were encouraged and helped with everything. They were all approachable and patient and willing to dispense the same advice over and over and over and over again.

Seriously this was the best experience i’ve had in a long time and whatever happens after today i WILL be involved in one way or another with the VRDL. I think i’m becoming obsessed…

BOOT CAMP DAY THREE

blitzkrieg deluxe — Sun, 22 Nov 2009 10:00:57 +0000

a productive week i think.

I was pretty sore up until Wednesday when i ventured out and did a little bit of form practise at rollerama. no derby girls to chat to so i didn’t stay long and came back on thursday.

thursday was awesome. met a lot more girls and had lots of good chats. it’s become pretty obvious that most of us are as nervous and unsure as everyone else which is kinda reassuring.

I spent most of the sesh just skating around and trying to plow stop, which now i can kinda do. not that well but maybe enough to get me over the line… i’m really not sure.

this brings us to sunday. it wasn’t hot this week which was a plus but we started with jumps, i don’t think i was too warmed up because i was the first girl to stack on my first jump no less. but after that i found something resembling a rhythm sorta. i over heated like i tend to do and needed to take my helmet up and drink more than most people. SO WEAK ! i feel like i constantly need to apologise to the instructors because i feel like i’m going to pass out. hopefully as my fitness improves i will be able to handle the heat better… or maybe i just need to cut my hair ._.

after the jumps it was falls. i think i’ve improved on these a little. just need to practise the 4 point falls a bit more. need to be more compact… like i’m in a bloody great nutshell.

after falls it was stops. t-stops are alright and plow stops are getting there unbelievably. more practise this week required but i’m feeling more confident for a change.

after the stops it was pace weaving. i could feel my eyes widen and mouth drop at the thought of moving round the track weaving in and out of people. i was almost literally shitting myself. but once we got going it was alot easier than i thought. the hardest bit was actually staying the right distance from the first person in front.

then came the “air traffic control” where basically once person stood at the end of the track making signals. each signal related to a skill. eg) arms left = strafe left/lateral movement, arms down = double knee fall, arms up = jump. we all lined up and got ready to go. i was first in my line and for some reason when the whistle went i just started going… i was however way to early and was taking part in the instructors demonstrating. i didn’t realise till half way down that no one else in fresh meat was with me. i felt like the biggest douche… so i skated to the end turned arnd and sheepishly returned to the front of my line. OMG HOW EMBARRASSMENT !!!. most definitely the biggest faux pas so far. i just hope people just think i’m just an idiot rather than an arrogant idiot.

after that disaster it was endurance while practising our cross over form in the anti clockwise direction (normal derby direction). it was all fun and games until we changed direction.. i can not cross over going clockwise. probably the thing i will need to practise most this week.

all in all i left the session feeling soaked to the bone in sweat, still cringing but also feeling a little bit better about my abilities. i know next week i’ll be a nervous wreak for the white star assessment but right now, tonight, i’m going to kick back and pretend everything’s going to work out fine.

it’s going to be a week full of skating me thinks, on any day i’m physically able to.

BOOT CAMP DAY TWO

blitzkrieg deluxe — Sun, 15 Nov 2009 10:32:44 +0000

well after last weeks brutal training sesh i spent a couple of days at the local rink.

on Monday i shared the huge rink with 2 primary school girls and a group of 3 older gents who i will refer to as “lemon party” . even though there was only a small group of people I’m sure they got a kick seeing me fall over multiple times practicing falls and plow stops (of which i still find impossible). i only stayed for an hour as it was still over 30 degrees and vowed to return on Thursday to skate with some of the VRDL ladies and fellow freshies.

Had a lot more fun on Thursday and i met a girl (donna kebab) which whom i used to play in an all girl gaming clan with years and years ago. spoke to a few girls and got some more tips and had a good hard skate.

then came Sunday….. dum dum dah !

It was a little cooler and more comfortable to skate this week and we went over everything we did the week before with additional skills:

lateral movement – moving efficiently from one side of the track to the other.

endurance - sprint skating (can do it but i need to work on my form)

jumps - over little cones (can kinda do this)

skating on one leg - going to need to practise standing on one leg for a while on this one.

what i learned :

Be very careful when i fall forward, keep fists clenched
Try not to fall backwards onto butt/tailbone (did this twice, very sore bot bot)
Skate lower, i stand too tall and will need to build leg muscles
Balance, i need to practise standing on one leg and being more comfortable.

so there’s a lot of need to work on besides grasping the basic skills. i’m going to skate at least twice this week before the next training session. i would do more but i’m actually still sore today.

part of me felt i had improved upon last weeks efforts and part of me felt like i was falling behind. i’m sure a lot of the girls are going through similar emotions. i get over excited and then just over it. my body won’t do what i want it to. all i know is i still want to roller derby whatever it takes.

Next Update : Boot camp Week Three