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With so much excitement over the past couple of weeks, including the bout and a derby wedding (<3 J-F & Megsy), I have had little time to actually sit down and think about the test. I think being occupied was a very good thing as the day before the test I did get a chance to sit down and think about it. That is when the panic set in. Cue teetering between massive amounts of self doubt mixed with fear and then total nonchalance. Total mind-cuss.
I had all these grand plans leading up to the test of practicing my push ups, sit ups and body bridges every night…this happened once >_> To make matters worse at lunch time my ankle spazzed out again and become really sore as it has a few times over the last month (I will see someone soon I promise). Even after loading up on advil, panadol and some codeine it still was causing some issues when it came to get on skates. I did my best to just stfu, suck it up and try not to soil myself. With all the nerves flying around the test came and went in what seemed like minutes but I swear it’s taken a year off my hearts life. Now after misty meaner let me pinch my results sheet for a minute (<3) I can confirm my exact results were: FITNESS Push Ups = 5/5 20 on toes or 50 on knees. I chose to get it over with asap and did them on my toes. ENDURANCE Laps: 3/5 – 25 laps, The same as I got on the white star test. One more lap and I would have been bumped up to the next bracket. now I have my handy clicker counter hopefully I’ll be able to monitor any improvements from now on. FALLS 1-point = 5/5 Woot WEAVING Weaving paceline = 4/5 Could be a little lower, swing out a little too far moving weaving to the outside and needs to skate to catch up. STRENGTH 2 min whistle squats and 2 x 1 min squats = 3/5 Could be a bit lower with my shoulders back more to engage my core. RECOVERY Satans Matress for 2 mins = 3/5 a bit slow to recover. Just glad I stayed conscious to be honest. GRAND TOTAL 3.72(3.7) out of 5 YELLOW STAR PASS! WOOTLES :D With the test over and my ankle still hurting I decided to take some good advice and actually ice it while the others did some scrimmage. At the end of the sessions the team drafts were announced. I am so very excited to say that I am now officially a CUTTHROAT CHARMER YARGH. I’m pretty sure I would have been happy either way as long as I passed. Both teams are full of awesome wenches but being a charmer certainly has the benefits of a black uniform and anyone who knows me knows I like my black. The best part is now I can scrimmage with contact so brace for Injury related blog posts ! At least now I know which team to buy merch for :) The whole evening had a bittersweet end for me as my wifey still has another couple of weeks until she gets her star (which she WILL get) but it just wasn’t quite the same without her. I went home a little dazed but ultimately happy. I didn’t sleep very at all. I just laid awake thinking about how fast everything seems to be going now after such a slow start almost a year ago. It’s been an exciting, frustrating and educational journey so far and I can’t wait to see where it takes me over the next 12 months. <3 Blitz |
Posts Tagged ‘south sea roller derby’
YELLOW STAR : I WANT TO SKATE FREE
Thursday, September 2nd, 2010SKATESPOTTING : CHOSE DERBY.
Monday, August 30th, 2010    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 |
SEMPER SKATE !
Monday, August 16th, 2010    |
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) |
WHITE 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 |
BOOTCAMP 4 : LIVE FREE OR SKATE HARD
Monday, 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.. |
