so! hm.

Not much to report.  I didn't go to practice last Monday 'cause I had just spent the entire weekend away from my family and wanted to just chillax with them and whatnot (and, of course, Roy decides to go bowling that night. ANYWAY). 

Thursday was scrimmage, and it was my usual frustrating attempt at jamming and fairly decent time blocking. 

Last night was Quarry, spent time helpin' out.  I feel bad for them because I'm such a horrible teacher - one skater was asking me about transitioning from forward to backward skating, asking me how I do it and I was like "ummmm....I just.....do it."  Eventually I was able to do it slowly enough that she could see and copy, but it's such muscle memory to me at this point that I can't explain it to people.

I've asked one of the skaters on the league to paint my helmet with a crown on it.  I have a loaner helmet right now so we'll see how it goes tonight. 

the weekend

We left on Friday about 6:30pm.  Got to the hotel in New Hampshire about 3am.  That was miserable.

Saturday we discovered we were about half an hour from the ocean.  TRIP FOR LUNCH!  The weather was amaaaaayyyyzing - sunny and temperatures in the 70's.  (Meanwhile back home it was rainy and in the low 40's, which made us cackle.)  We had an awesome lunch at an oceanside restaurant and just enough time to do a little window shopping before we had to go to the venue.

The A team played first, which was unusual for us.  It was weird getting warmed up and then SITTING for an hour + watching our leaguemates play.  (The whole venue was kinda weird - there were 150 fans TOPS.)  It was a crazy close game and Skate Free or Die won, 134-132.

Then it was our turn. 

During the first half, I played in ONE jam.  There were three lineups (power and then two) and I was supposed to switch out with someone else in one of the lineups, but they kept playing her instead.  If someone was out on a penalty, either she or I would sit out.  When one skater got injured (which brought us down to eleven, a perfect two lineup + three jammer rotation), they still didn't switch it up.  Honestly, we were getting pissed (and my teammate is the kind of person who is *always* happy, so for her to get pissed, it takes a lot). 

Finally I got to play more in the second half, and people were commenting on the hits I was making.  We ended up slaughtering them, 183-73. 

Afterwards, the coach and bench manager came up to me separately, telling me what a good job I'd done out there (and the bench manager apologized).  So I'm going to treat it as "we didn't want to play you too much at first because we wanted to test you on coming back after your injury, and you passed".

Then we went and got $4 Long Island Iced Teas.  Many of them.

Yesterday was spent driving back home, got in around 7pm.  Woke up this morning to snow and miserable weather.

a realization or two or three or twelve or one

I'm not very agile on my skates.  I can't hop around and juke around other players.  I need to work on that.

I can, however, take a hit pretty well. (I think.)  I was jamming last night against the A team and they'd wind up and hit me with everything they had and I'd bobble, but not fall.  (Although that's another thing I need to work on.  When they'd gear up to hit me, I'd brace myself for the hit, rather than moving out of its way.)

Another thing I do quite frequently is I'll spin to get out of a tough situation, or in the aftermath of a hit (giving one or receiving one).  It came in very handy last night, when I was able to pirouette out of the way of one of the A team's heaviest hitters to break the pack.

I also need to get lower.  When I'm low, it's easy to get past other players.  NEED TO REMEMBER THAT.

Tomorrow's my first bout with my team in almost six months.  I'm kinda glad it's an away bout, as if I horrifically embarrass myself, it'll be in front of strangers.

----

Oh, the Fuel Band thing worked AWESOMELY during scrimmage.  It tucked right under my wrist guard, and I got about 1000 points for the practice.  Yay!

so I'm a sucker for shiny pretty gadgets

behold my Nike+ FuelBand!

MUST....GET....DOTS...TO REACH....GOAL!

I tried it with my wrist guard last night and it fits underneath the guard fine, so I'll try it out tonight at scrimmage and see if it works.  I tried wearing a FitBit once but it didn't work (since that's really more of a pedometer).

Plus, the commercial for it has Twin Peaks, "Sabotage", Whip It!, Slap Shot and a bunch of other cool stuff..  (I'm a sheep, baaaaa.)

how far I've come, or something like that

I was brushing my teeth this morning and was reminded:

I joined our league in July 2008, and my first bout was in November 2008 (as a member of a pickup team mostly comprised of another league).  A few days before that bout, those of us skating traveled to that league to practice with them.  Their coach had us do an endurance drill that left me in total and complete tears at the end.

Nowadays, we probably do drills that make that seem like NOTHING AT ALL.

so, yay.

finally!

I think I got my mojo back!  Last night's practice was *really* good.  I knew what I was doing, I could do it, I didn't get annoyed and frustrated, etc.

a few highlights:

- I chased after the opposing jammer as she broke the pack, CAUGHT UP TO HER AND PUSHED HER OUT OF BOUNDS.  Of course, I was so excited I'd been able to do it that I kept doing it waaaaaaay out of bounds and would've gotten a penalty if we'd actually been playing.  BUT ACTUALLY CHASING THE JAMMER WORKED!

- Mid-scrimmage, one of my teammates fell pretty much right in front of me.  I got my skates wide and she went BETWEEN MY LEGS.  Fortunately she did not get up right then or I would've taken a helmet to the ladybits.

- We did some "breaking a wall down" drills.  Coach Dude was like (to me) "you're looking at the blockers, and you're looking at the floor.  Look for the spaces."  It made sense, and I tried doing it, but it was difficult.  SOMETHING TO WORK ON.

- In the same "breaking a wall down" drills, as part of the wall, the two blockers on the outside of the wall had the jammer behind them.  When no one expected it, I swooped in from the inside and knocked her out of bounds.  GO ME

You'd think that if you're doing a plow stop on a straightaway, it wouldn't matter if you were going in derby direction or opposite derby direction.  IT DOES.  All of us were having issues trying to do them going clockwise.  It was weird.

yay, cool!

Two of the fun bouts I signed up for at ECDX were picked - Southpaws v. Rightons (I'm a lefty) and Bumblebees v. Ladybugs (LADYBUGS FTW).

i got in fairly early this year, so hopefully I'll get on the roster for at least one of them.

yay

I've been rostered!

It's in New Hampshire - and not "just over the Vermont border New Hampshire", but "spit and you'll hit Maine New Hampshire."  About an eight hour drive.  And the bout starts at 4pm.

Methinks I will be leaving Friday afternoon and staying over.

I had my last PT session; Jeremy sees fit that I don't need to see him again unless I want to.  He asked me on a scale of 1 to 10 how I felt my roller derby playing was now (10 being back to where I was before), and I told him "8.5 to 9, but the rest is mental", which is the case.

I wonder if it's my skates.  I know last Thursday I had to tighten the hell out of my trucks cause I felt wobbly.  Maybe next skating time (Sunday) I'll go back to my old skates and see if I still have issues.

ow ow OW ow ow

So we had practice last night at our bout venue rather than the rink because it's Spring Break for the kids and whatever. 

Remember last week how I hit my butt and had to ice it?  I KEPT HITTING THE SAME SPOT.  REPEATEDLY.  I finally just gave up on scrimmaging because it hurt so much.  (It still is sore, and last night I actually broke down and took some naproxen for it, which I *never* do.)

last night

was better.  I felt like I accomplished a few things (even though I had trouble remembering what color I was in scrimmage and kept announcing the wrong color jammer was approaching the pack).

Jamming was annoying, but so what else is new.

might as well update

yesterday I finished the helmet covers for CNYRD - sixteen total.  I'm improving my technique with each one, I think, but I still am having trouble cutting the stars so they look pretty (I can't do it with a rotary cutter because I can't get the cutter into the angle at the center of the star, so I have to trace them, which is kind of a pain.  I've tried the thing where you fold the fabric and make a single cut to make a star (a la Betsy Ross) but I don't cut at the proper angle and it turns into a blob) and then I have trouble sewing them on so they don't all bunch up.

Pivot covers, though, I'm a frickin' expert.

scrimmage tonight, should be fun.  Hopefully I will get my act together and won't feel like such a waste on the track. 

a thought, or a goal, or something

so in addition to our roller rink practice space, there's an ice rink that puts down sport court in the summer that we use for practice space.  During the week, they're open during the day for free skating.  (They also have our track permanently taped down on the floor.)

I think once they're open, I'm going to try and get there as often as I can to practice speed and endurance stuff.

sigh

Injury Report for Last Night:

1. Early on, I fell kinda backwards and landed on my right hand, with my elbow locked, so all the force went up into it.  Ow.

2. Then I fell on my butt (not my tailbone, fortunately) after getting knocked down again.

3. During our endurance sprints, I hit a spot on the floor that people previously had mentioned as being slippery.  My feet literally shot out sideways (at least that's what it felt like) and I hit the track pretty hard.

I was up at 3am alternating an icepack between #1 and #2.  BUT IT DOES SHOW THAT I KNOW MY ASS FROM MY ELBOW.

I'm still floundering.  Getting worse, even, it feels like.  It occurred to me this morning that I don't think I looked around ONCE during our scrimmage part of practices.  WTF, Queenie?  That's frickin' Derby 101.  Blah.

We're changing up the way we're playing - not fielding a pivot, not giving our lineups specific positions to play, everyone cramming up by the jammer line - and I don't like it.  It's not what I'm used to.  There's no time to really set up strategy when the beginning of the jam is a big game of backwards Red Rover.  OCCUPY THE PIVOT LINE! All these changes in our team really started while I was out on my injury, so now I'm getting thrown into it when everyone else has had experience with it.  Sigh, argh, bleh.

I wonder if any of it has to do with my skates, that I'm really not as stable on them as I think I am.  I wonder if I should switch back to my old skates just for one practice and see how I do.  It can't hurt, I suppose.

ah well

I wasn't rostered for our next bout (the first one I figured I'd be eligible for), and I'm not as OMFGWTFGRAR QUEENIE SMASH as I thought I'd be.  It's sort of a world-weary "they're right, I'm not where I should be" acceptance.  I'll just have to work harder and whatnot.

In other news, I signed up for a few of the fun ECDX bouts.  We'll see if they get into the lottery.