  |
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 |
WHITE STAR : THE FINAL SKATIER
June 28th, 2010BOOT CAMP 5 : THE EMPIRE SKATES BACK
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 :) |
BOOTCAMP 4 : LIVE FREE OR SKATE HARD
June 7th, 2010   |
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:
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
May 31st, 2010   |
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:
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. |
SKATE HARD 2 : SKATE HARDER
May 23rd, 2010   videos   |
Big derby related weekend ahoy ! (more nautical references… I can’t help it) The bout : Metal mayhem at puckhandlers. Dolls Au Go Go Versus Dead Ringer Rosies. It was a great bout with lots of strategy. I’m getting a better idea of the rules and penalties which makes it much more interesting to watch. Dolls won with an impressive margin but there were a lot of ring-ins on both sides due to injuries. Unfortunatly the next VRDL v VRDL bout will be a while off but next month it’s the great southern slam where the travel team will play (and own !) interstate teams over 2 days. It’s going to be an awesome trip. The bouts half time show was erm…monkey inspired air guitar… An interesting performance but I chose to believe it could have been improved with the addition of poop throwing or a recreation of THIS Highlight : The 3 D’s … Dragonforce, Dethklok and Dio. Best Metal Dj set ever \m/ I took some very shitty photos and videos that you can click on over on the left there. And then came the second week of bootcamp. While thanks to my derby wife yawning on the trip over which in turn made me yawn and subsequently feel tired, she more than make up for it with a little bomb of caffeine before we got skating. <3. We all started out stretching but then came the dum duh DAH push-ups, sit ups and body bridges *horror movie scream* … I always knew this day would come… I was fairly woeful as I expected I would be. It may be time to actually start doing them in my own time without being forced to. nuts. We recapped all the stuff from last week but then got to do some cool things I hadn’t done before.
The remaining part of the session was games related. Skills relay in groups of 6, a weird “stop and go” game where you had to stop (t’s and plows) within 3 seconds while racing to the opposite wall and my favourite.. “the game when you race to capture cones by doing 4 point falls faster then your opponents”. catchy name. The games were awesome. Everyone seemed to be having fun and it was pretty hilarious watching the competitive spirit come out. So things to do before next week: more situps and push-ups (guh), more squats and more 180 slides. Looking forward to week 3 already. In other news: I also decided on my next tattoo. Well that is IF I get into SSRD and IF no one takes my name before the 3 months waiting period. The second if seems slightly more unlikely.. but you never know.. suffice to say that if it does get taken at least my new arch nemesis will have a rad name. |
