I'm going to make a confession: I did *not* want to go to derby practice today. Last night was rough -- I couldn't keep up with the pace line, I fell and was afraid I'd busted my bad ankle (it turned out that it was OK), basically I felt totally useless.
Today, I really didn't want to go. But I knew that this was one of those situations where the thing that you don't want to do is exactly the thing that you must do. So I went. And it. Was. Awesome.
First, there was a new girl, and Boxxx left me to help her gear up. Helping out new skaters is something I really like to do, so that put me in a good mood to start with. And then, the team had a guest trainer (Rex Havoc, from Emerald City Roller Girls -- very nice lady, and one hell of a skater), and I was watching on the sidelines while they did drills ... and Brick came over and explained what was going on, which I really appreciated. And then ... oh, this is silly, but when they did the team cheer at the end, they called me over to be included in it. What can I say, small stuff like that can really make a difference.
Oh, but it gets better. :-)
I was the only newly-advanced girl at practice, which meant that I got Bones all to myself. All of our trainers are awesome, but there's something about Bones ... she can really motivate me. Maybe it's because she was my very first trainer, at my first practice. I don't know. Anyway, after stretching, she said we were going to do 25 laps in 5 minutes. Verbally, I said, "OK." Mentally, I said, "Oh shit."
Yes, I have done 25 laps in 5 minutes before, or else I would not have passed min skills. But I had never done it on the sport court before.
Well, friends, I skated 25 laps in 5 minutes today. On the motherfricking sport court. Booooooooya!!
After that, we did 24 minutes of opportunity (sprint a minute, do a drill for a minute, repeat). God, that hurt. And then we did a lot of stuff focused on crossovers, which continue to be difficult for me -- but the stuff we did today really helped. Thanks Bonesy!!!
Ooh, and then we did shopping carts (pushing Bones around the track is so easy compared to pushing two or three girls), and then we did off-skates conditioning, which was tough but felt really good too. I'm getting better at wall sits -- they don't even start to hurt really until about the 40 second mark.
I have a lot of work to do, but I left practice today feeling like I will be able to do it. That is the best thing that's happened to me all week.
Oh, and I never, ever want to go a week without skating again. It's amazing how much endurance you can lose in a short time. I was already fanatical about attending practice, but now I'm going to be downright fundamentalist about it. :-)
