I DID IT!!!!

The skill that has been the thorn in my side has been defeated. There will be no stopping me now. In order to bout one needs to pass all WFTDA (Women's Flat Track Derby Association) minimum skills. I finally passed my 25 laps in 5 minutes skill. Amazeballs. I have had the

other skills passed for ages now and have just been waiting for this high. Eighth time is a

charm...for sure! I know know what success feels like. Top that with the fact that I am FINALLY

playing with a REAL team (which means actual booting opportunities) and I think I am ok calling myself a Roller Girl. First bouts on the docket are 2/23 (Iowa) and 3/25 (Rochester).

In other newsy dolls are coming a long. We did an unofficial 25/5 last night and 80% of them easily passed. The ones that were a bit slow still had improved on their time. It's obvious that they are practicing on their own (open skate or what not) and that is so exciting.

A New Chapter

Thank-you to those who have nudged me to start blogging again. I am quite flattered that people care enough to give me the elbow. Thank you especially to Fannie Tanner and Jenuine.

My blogging drought has stemmed from lots of changes in my derby life. I'm still at it for sure. But I'm in a different place, a different role, and a different....world completely.

As recently as October I took on a night job. It absolutely conflicted with roller derby. I was working overnights. I'd go in 10:3opm (sometimes 3:3opm!!) and be awake all night until the shift was over at 8:30am. I'd drive straight home and with any luck I'd be asleep by 9:30am. Because I was commuting south for practice I'd have to be awake and on the road by 1pm. This schedule sucks, especially when you then ask your body to participate in a very rigorous 3 hour practice. I did this for about a month until I started really noticing my body just not responding like I knew it could. It wasn't doing what my mind asked it too. It was all so very....depressing. I'm not the type that cries. Like...ever. But one day at practice I just totally broke down, I skated off the track and into the hallway. I found a corner and just sobbed. Derby saved me in so many ways that I can even start to articulate it. It has made me stronger, more content, more confident, and just generally more happy. I DID NOT want to give up roller derby...I knew I would be lost- I would lose friendships, I would lose my ONLY form of exercise, I would lose..motivation. Truth.

So I went home that night a looked to see what other leagues were close to me up north. I would drive several hours if I had to in order to make it work. I already had a friend who lived 15 minutes away that was driving just over 2 hours to practice...maybe I could join her. Seriously. Derby is that GREAT. Lo and behold, I found a small team only 1.5 hours from me ( I had been driving 1 hr. 10 minutes). Their practice schedule worked. I wasn't terribly excited to lose out on the AWESOME-NEVER-GOING-TO-BE-SURPASSED training I was getting from MNRG (THANK YOU TIKI AND HANNA!! I OWE SO MUCH TO YOU!!!)...but at least I'd be playing. I started weighing my options and making the good old pros/cons list. That night I sat down to check Facebook and saw a post from one of my friends. It was a "informational" meeting for girls in my are who wanted to play roller derby. Right? Here I am in they turmoil about what to do when a league starts not 30 minutes from me. It's like the curtains opened. Whoopee!!

And so my new journey started. I am now a member of the S.C.A.R. Dolls. (Saint Cloud Area Roller Dolls). It's a different world all together. I find myself being the teacher (that's some scary shit right there) more than the teach-ee. But at the same time I'm excited...I'm already seeing girls passing me in skills...humbling stuff that is! I think before we know it we will have a good core of scrimmage ready girls and the derby stuff can commence. :D I haven't blogged about this because I've been in a weird place about losing seriously awesome training but gaining the real McCoy. It's not good. It's not bad. It just is...and I'm still wrapping my head around it.

Catching up.

I promised myself I'd always be on top of this and post after each practice. Today will involve two weeks worth of posts...but don't worry...it won't be too long. Honestly, there isn't really all that much to say.

WEEK ONE- So this week we practiced in the Xcel. We did stages like we always do in that area. The coaches allowed us to pick our groups 1-4 depending on our level of comfort. I put myself in 2. Even though I was scrimmage ready last session, I have also been off skates for too long and knew I was rusty. I was comfortable with the group I was in for all of the sessions although, admittedly, there were times where I think I should have moved myself up just to be sure I was challenged. I found out later that that top group did some one foot weaving and surly a few other things that would have been helpful in prepping for WFTDA skills testing. I left feeling OH SO HAPPY to be back skating. Man how I have missed it!!

WEEK TWO- My insurance for September didn't happen. So I was off skate. This sucked since the ENTIRE team was getting skill tested and I missed it. I know I can get tested next week...but it won't be nearly the same. There is something about suffering with teammates that makes it all bearable. I hope I'll be able to make it. 25 in 5...I WILL defeat you!

Crapping Bricks.

Well, we had our first official deb meeting. There are 32 returning girls and over 40 new girls. I left the meeting with mixed feelings. I Think mostly because I am so unsure of myself and my abilities. The good news is that we are going to 3 hour sessions. The first will be basically working on skills- agility, footwork, falls, starts, stops, endurance. 2nd is team work stuff. The 3rd hour is scrimmaging...with MNRG skaters. Great. Right? Except---we are no longer scrimmage ready and will have to test into it by passing WFTDA skills. I am freaking out about the 25 in 5. (Skate 25 laps around the derby track in 5 minutes or less). I have tried and failed at this three times in my derby life. Once was when I tried out for NSRG after only skating for 4 months. I got 23 laps in 5 minutes and fell once. The second was at an outside NSRG clinic. I got to 23 again- no falls- but it was outdoors and hot. The third time was last session for debs. We tested "just for our information". Again I fell, and again I fell short of the mark. I think by like 20 seconds. I feel gross and disgustingly out of shape when I have to do that test. And now that it has direct bareing on weather or not I get to keep scrimmaging just tears me up. My teammates are so supportive telling me I can do it...but...I really don't know. Especially after not skating this summer. I guess I'll just keep trying it every week until I get it. Right? Right.

Session 3

Hi everyone! It's been a long lonely summer without roller derby. In other news, it's been mad fun watching/hearing about some of my teammates go through bootcamp and eventually getting drafted onto the Minnesota Roller Girls. This Saturday officially will begin the fall session for 2011. This will be my third session. I have a lot of thoughts about this. 1.) I haven't been skating near as much as I should have been in the off season- mostly due to the fact that my skates were at Reidell getting fixed, must also because I've been lazy. 2.) This makes me very scared to start skating again, I'll obviously be out of shape and I hope I don't have to start over at ground ZERO again. 3.) I have been skating a few times and most recently (although I was mad sore for 2 days after) I felt like my skills were at or better than they were last year. 4.) WE GET TO GO TO A COUPLE MIXERS! This means we were invited to two smaller leagues to do some scrimmaging for the PUBLIC! Exciting and scary all at the same time. My mom and dad say they will come to Eau Claire to watch. I'm really excited to see what they think. As of right now I think they have some serious misconceptions about what roller derby really is. All for now..until Sunday. Whoop!

It's been a bit.

But that doesn't mean anything. Last time I posted I was riding high on my 30 second lead jammer status. Allow me to post a picture. Although it doesn't prove I was lead jammer...I think it was taken just off the line. This is an especially good one since you can't see how inappropriately tight my black scrimmage shirt is. (If you didn't read my last blog you don't know that I showed up to practice wearing pink when we were asked to wear our scrimmage colors. (Hey..I was out of the house since 9am!) Luckily I had a black undershirt..you know the one that is supposed to have a "slimming" effect...yeah..I needed help getting it on OVER my clothes..lol..). Anyway. Yeah. That was a serious highlight.

So now you are wondering...cool..so in May you had a seriously kickass practice and it's now July and we haven't heard a peep out of you. What gives? Well, my friends...I think I only had one or two practices after that lead jammer day and the apparently weren't super exciting since I didn't even remember to come back and blog about it. I know one those of us who weren't trying out ended up working with the new girls on basic skills..and you know what? That was actually really pretty fun. IT's fun to see how far I've come. We also had a GREAT banquet. I should post a picture of that too, right? Right? See here my WONDERFUL scrimmage team (plus some coaches). Now looking back at my pictures I'm getting a bit sad. I'm noticing that 7 of those girls made boot camp and a good percentage of them will make the team. 2 of those girls have moved. And..um..3 of those are coaches. That leaves...let's see...OH....5 of us left. LOL. It will be exciting to see how the team grows next year. Tiki said that if she has her way we will be traveling...yeah..exciting right? All for now...will be pretty quiet on the derby front since we are on the off season. Start again in August. My skates are currently getting fixed (I had some stitching come off) and I'll hopefully have them back soon so I can be good and ready for fall session. Whoooop. Debs.

Lead Jammer!!

OMG! Today's practice was simultaneously the most difficult and most fun practice of the session. :D I don't even know where to start it was so wonderful! This post is going it be a mess. The first thing I noticed when I got to practice was that there was way to many of the girls wearing black or white. This threw off big flags in my head because our scrimmage teams are black and white. (I'm on black. Whoot!!). I quickly asked about it and yes, Hanna had sent out an email asking the scrimmage girls to wear their colors. OOPS! I had been out of the house since 9am. I was adorned in BRIGHT PINK. Awesome. The good? thing is that I also had a black undershirt along that I had been wearing that day under a dress shirt. Practice started with ladder drills around a big track. We were practicing in the exhibit halls. Normally I hate it there because the floor is so slippery. After warm ups Betty found me and convinced me to change my wheels into some better once that she had brought for me to try. Yes, she really is just that awesome. When I first started skating I had the stock wheels that came on my Rock Flame skates. I quickly upgraded to Flat Outs which are 88a. I loved them and they pretty much got me through my first year of skating. Then I borrowed some old wheels from a friend of mine that were Interceptors- 93a. Coincidentally, she had also received them from Betty. Again, yes...Betty LaRude really is just that awesome. Lucky for me my friend wasn't quite ready to use wheels that were that hard and she graciously loaned them to me. Thanks Ferret! I used a full set of these for a month or so and even got new Red Bone bearings for them. (ABEC 7). Either I wasn't 100% ready for them, or they were just too slippery for me and so I created a hybrid set. Interceptor's on the outside, Flat Out's on the inside. This was great...until I developed a really annoying squeaking that followed me wherever I went. Turns out the old Interceptor wheels were breaking down and the rubber was slowly coming off the metal hubs. So I was left with ---go back to a full set of Flat Outs...or deal. I chose to deal. Well, last week Betty asked me what was squeaking and I told her and didn't think anything of it. That lady remembered me and brought me something new to try! While we were changing out my wheels I REALLY wanted to keep my flat outs on the inside and try the new wheels (Atom Grods with ABEC 9 bearing) on the outside. I remembered that a full set of interceptors was too much for me. She talked me into, or rather kind just went a head and put the full set of Grods on my skates. WOW! I stood up and INSTANTLY felt a difference. I don't' know if it was the bearings or the wheels by I felt like I was just gliding. I need me some of these. Thank you Thank you Thank you Betty!
We started practice with backwards skating/sprinting drills. And then sprinting/falling drills. Umm..when did I forget how to 4pt fall and (especially) sprawl? Its U.G.L.Y. I am going to need to work on these. Even my recovery was questionable. I seem to be able to handle the turn around falls and recover well. We then worked on jump turns. Now..you remember that the debs have worked on these twice and both times I missed. Once I was gone and the other I was off skates. I felt like an idiot. As we went though, I slowly got the hang of it. I definitely need to keep working on them, but they slowly became less...scary. I bail on the left turn from front to back EVERY time though, even with Tiki yelling "STOP THINKING and GET OUT OF YOUR HEAD." We then got to scrimmage!!!!!! I was so excited. Contemplated sitting out because of my ankle, but I'm so glad I didn't! I know I wasn't awesome at any of it. But..I also didn't feel quite so lost as I have in the past. It's hard because we don't' scrimmage very often so I feel like we forget stuff. But today we actually had a small ref team there calling majors. To my surprise I did not get called on one. When we were getting ready to start Tiki and Hanna told us that everyone had to Jam at least once. I think I've said before that I hate jamming. This body is not made for it. I'm slower than molasses half the time. Well, at one point Hanna handed me the jammer pantie and asked if I'd went yet. I was like...no..no I haven't. I waltzed my butt out to the jammer line mutter apologies to my black team under my breath. I've jammed before and don't' think I ever even made it out of the pack. I was actually quite terrified. Well, this time, no only made it out of the pack but I looked up at my ref and lo and behold she was giving the lead jammer sign. I think I audibly said "are you kidding me"? I certainly wasn't the first jammer out of the pack, but thankfully, it doesn't matter...I just had to be the first jammer out of the pack legally. :D I was stoked and then looked to see I was 1/2 a lap behind the pack..yeah...my experience as a blocker told me I'd never catch up. When I hear Hanna say "Flik you can call it off if you don't think you'll catch up before she (the white jammer) does". And..of course I did! After that jam I was just...happy. I guess derby does that for me. I told Hanna that I guess I'm just going to concentrate on marking it through the pack leagally every time I have to jam and then hope that the other jammer screws up or that my girls can push her out. And to my amazement Hanna laughed and said "That's what I do, I'm a horrible jammer". Sweet. So...my lead jammer status might have lasted all of 10 seconds....and I might not ever be lead jammer again. But I've done it. Put that feather in my cap! When we were done we had to 5 minutes of hell and it was...hellish. But also, not as hellish as I've experienced in the past. Maybe I'm getting better. Maybe Betty's wheels were just that wonderful. Maybe a combo of the two? We then ended with 5 minutes of core. One exercise for every 1 minutes. Sit Ups, Mountain Climbers, Plank, Sit ups. They blew the final whistle and at least 8 of us just laid there. We were all so tired. I love my debs. I love my scrimmage team. I love my coaches. I LOVE DERBY. Yep.


OH! Also...as per my blog from the last time we scrimmaged...you know..the one where I was practically in tears because I took out MY OWN jammer twice? The one where I made my new goal of taking out the white jammer at least once.? Well..I failed. HOWEVER...and I verified this with two of the girls who jammed. I DIDN'T get in their way. victory! I am improving. Yipee.