Sunday, February 28, 2010

so when last I wrote

I hadn't mentioned that Maverick was home sick Wednesday and Thursday - he threw up a few times, and had a fever.  It's the first time he's ever missed school *ever*, so he was overdue for it, but it was still a bummer to watch. 

Early Friday morning, I ended up with whatever he had, and spent most of the morning puking my head off.  It was miserable.  I couldn't even keep down water for a while.  I pretty much spent until last night in bed, drinking the occasional glass of water and sleeping.  I can't remember the last time I went to the gym (but on the other hand, I've lost 6 pounds - too bad I'll just gain it all back).

So I'm really only sort of now, Sunday around noon, coming back to the land of the living.  I'm not 100% yet, but we'll see what happens.

Thursday, February 25, 2010

so, tuesday's practice

Tuesday was geared for the skaters who want to try out for the travel team. Our travel team coach (who left halfway through because her pregnancy due date was 2/24 and HER WATER BROKE) is notorious for putting skaters through Death Paces (I would read the Facebook statuses of people after practices and they'd be like "OMFG JUST GOT BACK FROM PRACTICE DYING NOW").

So yeah, those were accurate.

Skating and skating and loop skating* and skating and pace lines and more skating and hey, let's skate and partner up with another skater and skate for a lap while you hold onto her hips and do a plow stop and  pacelines where you have to hold hips and pull the 19 skaters behind you for a lap and more skating!  The penny-sized blood blister that developed on the ball of my right foot that took the entire off-season to vanish? Came back about two hours in.  Ow.

But I didn't have to drop out of anything, which I suppose counts for something. (During the loop skating, I kind of trailed a little off the pack once or twice, but not enough that people were yelling at me to catch up.)

I haven't ordered replacement Heartless wheels yet.  I think for the scrimmage tryout for the travel team I will go back to my Fugitives.  I was skittering skittering on the really sharp turns of the loop skate. 

It will be interesting, the travel team tryout.  There are 21 or 22 skaters trying out for an at the time unknown number of slots (probably between 18 and 20).  Will I make the cut? We shall see.

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* Loop skate is where you basically skate the shape of a safety pin around cones (which I kept running over and squashing).  We did them in groups of two, in a pyramid style - one group did 2 laps, then the other did 2, the the first group did 3, and so on up to each group doing 5 laps and then back down to 2.

Tuesday, February 23, 2010

first real practice of the season, aka GUH

oh lordy lord lord.  I am a pile of guh and a blood blister and a painful contact lens which I ripped out of my face as soon as I got home. I am thankful, however, that I kept up on the exercise stuff or they probably would've had to scrape me off the floor.

back in the empire state

So I was in North Carolina Thursday-Monday, for my grandmother's memorial service.  It was a sad occasion to be sure, but it was good to see everyone on my dad's side of the family (they're spread out across the US - Virginia, California, Arizona and then us here in New York).

I used the fitness center exactly once while I was there - 15 minutes on the elliptical, yay me - and ate bunches and bunches.  Sigh.

Tonight is practice for those who are going to try out for the travel team.  I am still conflicted about that.

Wednesday, February 17, 2010

middle of teh weekzar

I WENT TO THE GYM LAST NIGHT.  Whee.  I started feeling crappy again during the weight lifting and exercise machine portion of it, though.  Don't know why. 

The assisted dip/pull machine was fixed and even though I hate that machine so very much, I did my repetitions on it.  My left elbow is still bugging me a little, but I slogged through it.  Go me.

I also did a half hour on the elliptical, during which I alternated between watching the Olympics (men's figure skating, yawn) and the pop-up rerun of LOST.  Did you know that there is a love triangle between Jack, Sawyer and Kate? I would not have known that if it weren't for those pop-ups!  Thank you ABC!

So today is Ash Wednesday and as a lapsed Catholic, I feel it is my duty to give up something for Lent, so I am going (read: trying) to give up eating everything that's not nailed down.  Fingers crossed.

Tuesday, February 16, 2010

oh! and....

Watched a lot of speed skating on...Saturday, it must've been.  I learned about the sheer AWESOMENESS that is/was Steven Bradbury (Salt Lake City games - the final of the 1000m.  He's last out of five, skating a fair distance behind everyone else [including Apolo Anton Ohno].  EVERYONE ELSE CRASHES, HE'S THE LAST ONE STANDING AND HE WINS THE GOLD MEDAL.  And even better, THAT WAS HIS STRATEGY - to skate behind everyone else and hope enough of them fell to get him to medal status.  He is totally my new hero now.)

It's really amusing to watch the crashes, as long as they don't end with, like, someone's thigh slashed open by a skate blade.  I really did not need to see the replay of J.R. Celski's injury.  (For what it's worth, I think I have only been in one bout where blood was an issue - the last bout of the season, I believe one of the other team's jammers got hit in the nose.)

We have a new coach this year, who is also a speed skater.  I'm not quite sure how well speed-skating will translate into derby-skating.  One of the better jammers on Queen City's league is a former speed-skater, but when it comes to blocking, it's not really necessarily about GO GO SO SPEED FAST FAST FAST.  (Plus, if we flung our arms around like that we'd get so many penalties it wouldn't be funny.)  Plus the stance is entirely different - speed skaters have flat backs, we squat like we're over a disgusting toilet.    We shall see how it plays out.

have to remember it's Tuesday, not Monday

(three day weekends always throw me off)

So, as I said yesterday, I did not go to the gym on Friday night.  I got sucked into the Opening Ceremonies with its non-functional cauldron.  (And, as I said to Roy Underkill, Bob and Doug McKenzie should totally have been the ones to light it, eh.)

So that was my excuse for Friday.  My excuse for Saturday was...I took like a four hour nap that afternoon.  I have always slept really crappily, and who can resist the siren call of a really comfortable couch? Not me, that's who.

So Sunday's excuse was....I got up late.  I was supposed to meet with our stats guy at 11am so he could give me my stats for the season, but he showed up 40 minutes late.  I hung around for a while, watching the first set of fresh meat skaters go through their assessments, but I had to get back home. 

(I also found out why The Bowling Powers That Be scheduled their makeup game for Valentine's Day.  Back at the start of the bowling season, they said "okay, we'll schedule it for the Sunday after the Super Bowl," and no one looked at a calendar to see that oh, hey, the Sunday after the Super Bowl is Valentine's Day.  Whoops.)

So that brings us to yesterday.  I'd signed up to help out with the fresh meat assessments last night.  They weren't at the rink where we normally have practices, because it's February Break and they have lots of private parties.  So we had it at the venue where we have our late summer/fall bouts.  The floor there is technically "polished concrete" but it's more like "semi-polished concrete with lots of cracks and bumps".  I tried out my wheels and skidded around a lot (but I wasn't the only one).  It was like doing donuts in a snow-covered parking lot.  I figure if I use good 88a black Heartless wheels as pushers, and my 92a yellow Heartless as my outside wheels, I should be okay.

The fresh meat, as I've said before, are absolutely awesome.  It's so awesome to see so many women frickin' excited to skate.  I think towards the end of last season we got a little apathetic, kinda "we've been skating nonstop for over a year* now we need a break".   So we've had our break and are now WE NEED TO SKATE NOW NOW NOW NOW NOW DAMMIT, and I think the influx of fresh meat is adding to the excitement.

On Thursday I have to fly down to North Carolina for my grandmother's memorial service.  I hate flying with the intensity of eleventy billion suns.  I am going to have to sedate myself up the wazoo.  (Xanax FTW!)  It means I'm going to miss the Cooked Meat party (celebration of the Fresh Meat who make the league) *and* the first league practice, about which I am kinda bummed.

Oh - so I did get my stats last night.  I have no idea what they mean, but apparently in one game I did really well.  Yay me?  Our stats guy had the numbers from two bouts - one bout where we lost, I played pivot about a third of the time and during those jams the other team scored eighty trillion points.  Whoops.  I don't like being pivot - I'm not good at telling people what to do.  I like inside blocker (put me on the line and I will stick there like glue) and back.  Outside you need to be able to move around the track more than I am really able to do, though maybe this year I will be better at that.

Tonight is Gym Night Whether I Like it Or Not.  Kyle is on vacation so I won't have Death Paces, but I can go and tinker around on some of the machines and do a half-assed job of it.  I wonder if the assisted dip/pull machine is fixed.  God, I hope not.



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*The timeline of our league kinda goes like this - the league began to take shape in February 2008; I joined in July 2008.  We started bouting in May 2009 and ended in November 2009.  So I, at least, skated 16 months without a break.

Monday, February 15, 2010

wow! a comment! I HAVE READERS!!!!

(of course, this makes me feel really bad now, that I didn't go to the gym on Friday *or* today.  Epic, massive, major FAIL.)

Friday, February 12, 2010

nothing matters but the weekend (BWOMP BWOMP BWOMP)

and once again we hit the weekend, not a moment too soon.

Should be fairly low-key; Maverick has his junior bowling league tomorrow morning. He is scary good bowling these days; we went on Super Bowl Sunday and his three game total was a 350.  Sunday is Valentine's Day but Roy Underkill has a make-up bowling league day from Christmas.  Apparently the people who decided to reschedule it for then are not celebrators of the holiday.

I really don't care about it one way or another.  My Confirmation name is Valentine, so in theory I should. (My mother thinks I picked it because it was my great-grandfather's middle name.  I picked it because it sounded cool and everyone else seemed to be going the Anne/Elizabeth/Margaret route.  I was such a rebel in 8th grade.) 

But then again, I don't care much about many holidays.  They're just so much work.  Decorating and stuff like that.  Christmas trees are the worst - if we didn't have a kid, we wouldn't get one. 

ANYway.

Tonight is my usual gym night.  I will probably go and watch the Olympic opening ceremonies (and then not watch anything else).  Back during the 2006 Winter games, I participated in the Knitting Olympics, wherein you cast on for your project during the opening ceremonies and had to finish by the closing ceremonies.  I was able to complete the Jesse's Flames sweater in that time, although I used a really cruddy yarn and I really don't wear it that often. (That's another one of my obsessions - knitting.  Yes, I have this book.  I've knit one or two things out of it.)

Ever since I started derby, I haven't knit as much as I used to, which I regret, as I enjoy doing it a lot (and because I have a room in my house filled with bins of yarn for projects).  There's only so many hours in the day, though.  I did pick up a project that had been languishing for a while again recently, so soon I will have a pretty pair of socks. (Do NOT ask me about my sister's sweater that I was supposed to have finished by Christmas 2008. Just don't.)

I really need to see a bout soon.  It's been so long, I'm getting antsy.  The closest league that's in bouting season now is Buffalo - Queen City Roller Girls.  Roy Underkill has a bowling tournament in Buffalo some time in March, and if the weekends line up properly I'll go with him, stay for the bout and convince someone on the league to give me a ride home.

Thursday, February 11, 2010

so (I say that a lot, don't I?)

Maverick and I both have Monday off (THANK YOU WASHINGTON AND LINCOLN).  Maybe he will want to go roller skating; I will have to ask him.

I think I have recovered from whatever was making me feel horrible on Tuesday. My chicken wing arms are still a little wonky, but so what else is new.   My left elbow, which started bugging me way the heck back when, is still not quite right, but (once again) so what else is new.  When you're trying to combat 35+ years of general sloth, things are not going to go smooth sailing right away.

Wednesday, February 10, 2010

so

some of y'all (by which I mean no one, who reads this blog, anyway?) might notice that I do 99.9% of my posting during work hours. Why would you risk getting fired, Kicktoria*?  Doesn't your job have an Internet policy?

In a word, no.

I work for one attorney who asked me once, completely serious, "How far does the Internet go?"

Basically as long as the work that needs to get done gets done, he really doesn't care what I do.  Heck, half the time he'll go out for lunch and not come back until I've already left for the day (I work 9am-2pm).

I have a very sweet deal here, for which I am most grateful.

-----------------------------
*For what it's worth, I generally prefer to be called Kicktoria, but 95% of the league calls me Queen or Queenie, so I deal.

in which I whine. a lot.

So yesterday I went for my personal training session with Kyle.  Some stuff I've done before (bench pressing with dumbells) and some new stuff (planks!  with weights on my back!).  I got about halfway through when I just started feeling like crap.  I don't know if it was the fact that I'd practiced the night before, or not, or what, but I got really sick to my stomach and miserable and all that.  So we finished very lightly and I went home and whimpered and watched Lost and then RuPaul's Drag Race episodes online (I saw Pandora Boxx perform live at the club where we had our last bout's afterparty.  She better win that whole damn contest, lemme tell ya).

So I had to do some arm-raisy exercise (I don't know what it's called) and I couldn't do 5 pounds with my right arm.  It was pathetic.  I figured it was from the whips I was giving at Monday's practice, so I told Kyle.  About halfway through my explanation I realized how bizarre it must sound ("basically you reach behind and YANK THE OTHER SKATER WITH ALL YOUR MIGHT SO SHE'S IN FRONT OF YOU AND TAKES ALL YOUR MOMENTUM.  THEN YOU HAVE TO SPRINT UP TO CATCH UP TO HER".) 

But hey, that's derby.

Tuesday, February 9, 2010

tuesday

So I borrowed a set of black Heartless wheels (88a) and they are a bazillion times better as pushers than the yellow 92a's.  Even though the 88's had nearly no tread, I wasn't worried I'd fly all over the rink.  So I'm going to buy myself a proper set, and then keep the 92/96 combo for the sport court.

Yesterday was the second day of Fresh Meat Cram Week (they're practicing Sunday/Monday/Tuesday/Thursday in anticipation of their tryouts).  There are a lot of great prospects out there; I'm excited.  (There are also some skaters out there who really need to not look like they're going to fall every single second.) 

I am also rethinking my travel team tryout status. Again.  One of the travel team skaters and I were demonstrating positional blocking and I could not get past her at all.  At all.  And she's primarily a jammer.  Sigh.

I did, however, get a cheap thrill out of lapping some of the fresh meat skaters during Hell (10 minutes of just skating as fast as you can).  I am easily amused.

My hamstring bugged me again, as per usual.  It was a sharp occasional pain, though, which, bizarrely, was easier to deal with than a constant ache. (I think that sentence wins the award for Most Commas In The Fewest Number of Words.) 

Tonight is my buddy Kyle again, whee fun excitement!  We had to give whips last night and I feel like I contributed absolutely nothing when giving them, and at one point someone took a whip on the outside and something in my right shoulder hurt for a moment. YAY.

Monday, February 8, 2010

blah

so as soon as I list through my injuries, my knee starts bugging me.  The right one. It's a sharpish pain right behind the center of my kneecap.  Sigh argh bleh dammit. 

I went through the lamest workout on Friday and didn't even go yesterday.  A SLACKER IS I.

So yeah. My grandmother died on Saturday. It wasn't a complete surprise; she was 92 and hadn't been doing that well lately, but it still really sucks. I've been making myself cry by thinking about how she's finally back together in the wherever hereafter with my grandfather, who died in 1995. They probably have a *lot* to catch up on.


In other, non-depressing news.....


Did I ever mention how old I am?  I'm 36 (insert involuntary shudder here).  The youngest member of our league was born THE YEAR I GRADUATED FROM HIGH SCHOOL.  Sigh. 

Someone is going to let me borrow her black Heartless wheels tonight (I am helping out with the Fresh Meat practice).  Hopefully she'll remember to bring 'em. 

(If you're asking yourself "What's all this about different colored wheels?  Is she that fashion conscious that she needs to color-coordinate her wheels?", read the next few paragraphs.   Otherwise, you can just skip 'em.)

Many skaters will mix their wheels - put softer, grippier wheels on the left side of each skate [the inside] and harder, slicker wheels on the right side.  It helps you on the turns.   "But Queen!" I hear you ask.  "How do you tell the grippiness of a wheel?"

That's the durometer.  It's a number, followed by an "a".  The lower the number, the softer and grippier the wheel.  Most wheel companies will assign a different color to different wheel hardnesses. My outdoor wheels, which need to be soft so they can go over twigs and random gravel bits and not send you flying, are 78a.  My current wheels are 92a (yellow) on the inside and 96a (white) on the outside, which is just too damn slick for me.  The black wheels I'm looking at are 88a.  I'm thinking if I do 88a inside and 96a outside, that might work.  We'll see. 

The surface upon which you skate also makes a difference as to which wheel you want to use.  Our practice space right now is a typical wood skate rink floor.  But, we don't have any of our bouts there.  Our bouts are on pretty dirty sport court and/or polished dirty concrete.  I won't get to try out the sport court until April (right now it's an ice rink), but I will get to try out the concrete next Monday.  We shall see what happens.

Friday, February 5, 2010

injuries et al

So even though you didn't ask, I'm going to talk about the injuries I've received last year while playing derby.

I managed (knock on wood) to make it through the season pretty much unscathed.  Beyond my tendonitis, which I have thoroughly bored all my non-existent readers with, I had some swelling under my right kneecap in June/July/August.  If I fell on my right knee it would be a big whole mess o'pain and I wouldn't be able to get up immediately.  Five/ten minutes later I'd feel perfectly fine.  I actually skated a bout like this, which was really stupid and selfish on my part.  But finally, after taking a break and having it still bother me, I went to the doctor.

(My doctor is awesome. He's a very athletic guy and understands my need to get back out there NOW NOW NOW NOW.) 

He diagnosed it as swelling under my kneecap and prescribed some supar-strong ibuprofen.  He also had me get X-rays, just to confirm I didn't have arthritis.

(insert the standard TV sound effect to indicate time passing.)

Guess what? I'm starting to get arthritis!

It doesn't hurt or anything, but I do get the CRUNCH CRUNCH CRUNCH when I go up stairs. 

So that's my knees. 

I also jammed my right ring finger knuckle a week before my last bout, and had to skate with it taped to my other fingers otherwise I was in a world of pain.  (You can see it in the picture I posted yesterday.)  Fortunately I was not wearing my rings at that practice, or they would've had to cut it off.  (It's only now, four months later, that the swelling's gone down enough that I can put the ring back on.)

So nothing broken (like many other women on our league) and for that I am most grateful.

so

on today's episode of "My Boss Left The Office For The Day at 11:30am"....

In addition to being a fearless skater on our league, I am also its Treasurer.  I'm the one who yells at everyone to pretty please pay her damn dues on time.  (It's not a fun job, which is why this season I'm foisting it off on the team captains.)  I'm also the one who is preparing the 501(c)(3) application, which is not very fun either.  But it's got to get done, so I do it.  Whee.

This upcoming week is Fresh Meat Practice.  We've been holding little training sessions every few weeks, to let the freshies know what they'll need to do to pass the WFTDA assessments, and they have been running with it.  They go to rinks on off nights to practice and practice and practice.  They call themselves the Dream Team.  It's honestly quite awe-inspiring (and a little scary; one of these chicks could take my place!)  So this upcoming week they'll have practice Sunday/Monday/Tuesday/Thursday, and then the week after that is their tryouts.  We'll have our first full everyone on the league practice Sunday, February 21. 

Thursday, February 4, 2010

oh!

I could also talk about the signficance of my number, 691. (You get to pick your own number.  Previously it could be whatever the hell you wanted, but nowadays with new WFTDA rules [four characters or less, has to be alphanumeric with at least one numerical digit] you don't have as much freedom.  It sucks for one of our players whose number was #XXX. I believe she's going to be #13 this season.)

I knew that I wanted it to have something to do with my son's birthday, which is June 9, 2001.  I didn't want to pick 69 because I'm not the HAW HAW HAW SHE MADE A 69 JOKE HAW HAW HAW type, and 6901 just seemed too long.  So I stripped out all the zeros and went from there.

 
Woot indeed.

let's see

it's a non-exercise day, and practices don't start proper for a few weeks, so....what shall I talk about today?

I could talk about how tasty my Dunkin' Donuts coffee is this AM.

I could talk about how I forgot to write our account number on the check I sent to the postage meter place, and we're down to less than $20 on the meter.   Oops.

I could talk about my new chopped-off hair cut.  I went from below shoulder-length hair to, like, super mega hella short.  It's nice.

I could talk about how I'm contemplating seeing if anyone wants to buy my (yellow, 92a) Chaser wheels and replace them with (black, 88a) Stalker wheels.  (Though I may wait to see how they work on sport court.)

I could talk about how I wish it would stop being so damn cold.

I could talk about how when I did the 20 laps in 5 minutes assessment back in November 2008, my average lap time was 11.95 seconds, and when I did the 25 laps in 5 minutes assessment on Monday, my average lap time was 10.56 seconds.

I could talk about the track that I wore into the basement floor when I was in 3rd and 4th grade from rollerskating on metal wheels, and how it's really kinda strange that after 25+ years, I'm back on skates again.

I could talk about how my elbow pads are held together by strings now and that I need to get new ones but I haven't found a place that sells ONLY elbow pads.

I could talk about how I should probably get a new helmet and how I'll need to have Lainey (one of our skaters who is quite artistic) paint another crown on it.  (I could talk about how the crown makes it very easy for me to spot myself in pictures.)

well, I guess I just did.

Wednesday, February 3, 2010

another Tuesday, another Death Paces

this time it was mostly arms.  "But Queen!" I hear you say.  "You don't really use your arms in roller derby, right?  I mean, you're supposed to keep 'em in 'cause you can't elbow people and such."  Well, you're right, but you also have to be able to whip people.  (Unless you're [a] insane and/or [b] from Rat City, in which case you do a leg whip.) 

My right arm is a weak little chicken wing.  It's really kinda sad.  Kyle had me do bench presses with dumbells and a few other machines, and it was obvious that my left arm was doing most of the work.

So I'm getting more and more excited for the start of the derby season.  It's been sooooooo long.  When I went for assessments on Monday it was so cool just to see everyone again, hang out, all that good stuff.

Tuesday, February 2, 2010

to travel team or not to travel team

so I had to let The Powers that Be know last night if I was going to try out for the travel team.  The tryouts will be a "scrimmage against each other" situation, on March 2.

For the first quarter, at least, the travel team will be veteran members only. I looked at the list of returning skaters, and there are 24 skaters who would be eligible. 

The top 20 will be travel team, and the remaining skaters (there are one or two who have specifically said they do not want to be on the travel team) will be divided up into the new home teams, which will be completed by fresh meat.

Therein lies the condundrum.  A home team that is 85% completely new, never-bouted before fresh meat is going to be completely different than (from? I can never remember which to use) what we did last year.  If I'm on a home team, though, I'll be a motherfucking superstar.  I might get to jam, too, which I like doing on occasion. If I'm on a travel team, I get the glory of being on the travel team. 
But I've got a month until the tryout, so we'll see what happens.

-----------------

So I suppose I should sacrifice something to the Hamstring Gods for watching over me last night.  It didn't bother me then and it's not bothering me now.

----------------

Death Paces again tonight.  I am skipping cardio, though, as it's the premiere of Lost and I have to watch it while IMing with my sister.  (Besides, I figure I did enough cardio last night.)

Monday, February 1, 2010

assessments, my name is kicktoria

so that was tonight.  I remembered this afternoon that, hey, there's a written part of the assessment, too! and maybe I should study.  So I did that.

So I get to the rink. I'm assessing with Syn and Candi, who are both jammers.

Everything's going groovy until it comes to the rock star fall.  First time, I don't get up in two seconds.   Okay, no problem.  I want to ace everything, I want to be the Queen.

Second time, I trip and fall.

Fuck.

Now I'm all scattershot and upset and crying and I can't concentrate.  The coach who's assessing me kinda pulls me aside, calms me down.  She tells me out of everyone, I'm her dream skater, because I'm not afraid to try anything.

I nail the rock star next try.

Everything else goes fine, whips and pushes and checks and pace lines.  Jumps, fine (the coach tells me I didn't need to jump *that* high).

So it all comes down to the big one. 25 laps in 5 minutes.  Coach tells me she will yell out my laps as I do them, and at the minute marks, she'll tell me if I need to speed up.  Okay.  Groovy.  We're told the record to beat is 3:57. 

Whistle, and we're off.

My wheels absolutely fucking suck.  I am sliding all over the goddamn place.  After two laps Coach tells me to speed it up a little.  That is not what I needed to hear so early in the trial.  My leg is aching (not the tendonitis, though, thank God for small favors).  I'm skitting around, praying I don't fall.  If I fall, it's game fucking over.  Syn passes me, and then I think she laps me.  Candi and I trade places a few times, but she was out for a large part of last year with back issues.

Skate, skate and more skating.  I hear people say I'm doing fine, Coach tells me I'm at a good pace.  I'm still gasping (remember all that Sprinty McSprintenheimer stuff? IT FAILED ME), and I'm swearing at my stupid wheels.  I lose my crossover rhythm.  I contemplate quitting and retrying this portion with my old wheels, but I don't want to be known as the skater who didn't pass the 25 in 5 on her first try.  My left leg feels like it weighs eleventy billion pounds.

Finally, finally, FINALLY I cross the line on lap 25.  My leg falls off and my heart explodes, and I puke all over the place.*

4:24.

Go me.

And I threw my hat into the travel team tryout ring.  But I think I'll go back to my old wheels for that.
----------------------
*Not really.

eep

so my assessment is tonight.  I'm all eep-y and nervous, even though it's a formality.  I want to crush the 25 laps in 5 minutes - (my goal is to do it in under 4 minutes).

knock on wood, my tendonitis is being quiet this morning.  A few derby girls have recently sung the praises of a local acupuncturist; I am contemplating it.

I'm also waffling on whether or not I want to try out for the travel team.  Of the 29 veterans of the league who are eligible, the top 20 will be chosen.  Am I in that 20? I dunno.

(followup on a previous post: Maverick finished 5th out of 22 at his bowling tournament.  Yay Maverick!)