Whew!

Last week I went to four Sick Town practices, plus an outdoor skate. This week I'm shooting for the same.

Monday night was a tough practice. Bones ran it, and she is like a tiny, friendly drill sergeant. She's never mean, but holy crap is she a tough lady! I must have worked different muscles than usual, because my legs were *sore* on Tuesday. I think it might be from all the sprinting we did. Confession time: when the trainer says "sprint," I don't always full-on sprint. It's not that I'm intentionally slacking off; it's just that sometimes when they call for a sprint, I am simply too tired to manage it.

Monday night, I pushed myself, both in the pace lines and in the drills. (I did have to drop out of a couple of pace lines and skate around the outside of the track. Unfortunately, they were hitting pace lines, and hitting is something I need to work on.)

Tonight was scrimmage night, and for the second week in a row the team invited the intermediate girls to join in. Scrimmaging continues to be totally fun and *totally* confusing. I'm trying hard to be useful to my team, but sometimes I just don't know what to do. I did hit some people tonight, and when I was jamming I tried my best to use my blockers' assistance to get through the pack.

The thing is, the girls on the opposing team are not idiots. When they see the weakest member of the team (that would be me) go in as jammer, it's like throwing fresh meat to a pack of hungry lionesses. I kept trying, but I have to hand it to the white team. They *blocked* my ass. For a while there it seemed like I just couldn't stay on the track, no matter what I did.

And then there were the times when I was blocking and the opposing jammer just zipped past me. And I stood there like, "Oh yeah, that's the girl I'm supposed to be stopping. Shit."

It's only my second scrimmage. I *will* figure this out! I did get through the pace lines at the start of practice, which were done with everyone, and at a pretty good pace. So there's that. I kept telling myself, "If you can't get through the pace line, you can't scrimmage."

I feel good about tonight. I tried my best, and I had a couple of moments where I was an effective blocker. Not many, but a couple. Next week (if the team lets us scrimmage next week), I will try to have more.