Minimum Skills

In case anyone wonders, here's what I didn't pass on the last minimum skills:

• 25 laps in 5 minutes. I did 21. I think I'm skating faster now, though.
  
• Stride - pushes need to be out to the side, not straight behind you. I'm annoyed at myself for failing this one, because I totally know it.
  
• Posture - Need to bend at the knees (approx. 90 degrees) and waist, and keep weight balanced over feet, especially during crossovers. Another one that I absolutely knew better than.
  
• Pacing - Need to be able to speed up/slow down without causing hiccups in the line, without hindering other skaters. Yeah, I need to work on this one.
  
• Weaving paceline - tripped other skaters while weaving; need to be able to maneuver through line without touching other skaters, while using good strides and posture; careful of large strides (i.e. kicking other skaters) and swinging arms (i.e. elbows). Still another thing I can totally do, but effed up on that test.
  
• Crossovers - Must bring outside leg completely over the inside leg, not just in front of; bending more at the knees will help. I also wasn't getting any push from my inside leg.
  
• Booty blocking - Very little contact; out of sync with the jammer's rhythm. This continues to bedevil me.
  
• Hitting - Passed taking the hits, but giving hits must be a transfer of energy, not just contact. I think this was the biggest surprise, because I thought I had hit pretty hard. I guess not. I'm working on it now.
  

(I should mention: many of these critiques are copied and pasted from the email Bones sent me telling me what I didn't pass.)

Fortunately, a lot of those are things that if I concentrate on them, I can absolutely do right now. And my speed and endurance are continuing to improve (and will only get better once I go back to my body conditioning class at school next week). The crossovers and booty blocking will probably take the most work.

The good news: I totally passed the jumps, on my first try. They were no big deal. Which was a very big deal. :-)

Monday practice, and Skatemberfest

Monday night's practice was really interesting. We were at Benton County, with the reasonable concrete floor and small space. We started out with 40 laps as a pack, and I was able to stay at the front of the pack for the entire 40 without any assists. That was pretty cool. I was fairly wiped out when we finished, but still.

Later on in the practice, we did pyramid sprints. Here's the interesting part. I was in the slower group, and on the way up (1 lap, 2 laps, up to 7) I was the slowest in my group. We were skating counterclockwise, which is the normal direction for derby. On the way down, we switched to clockwise, and after the first set, I was the fastest of my group. I'm sure part of that is because the other girls were uncomfortable with skating clockwise, because all three of them are generally faster than I. But I was doing real crossovers -- pushing off with my inside leg and everything. I felt like I was practically horizontal on the turns (I'm sure I wasn't, but I'm sure I was a lot lower than usual). It was pretty amazing.

If only derby were done clockwise ...

But this definitely means I'm capable of it. I need to work on my left leg's flexibility and strength (because, see, when you're skating counterclockwise, your left leg is your inside leg and it's the one I'm having trouble pushing with). But if I can do it on one side, I can do it on the other. Or, I will be able to.

Our Skatemberfest bout was Saturday. That was one long-ass day for me. I got to the venue at 7 a.m., and except for a couple of hours, I was there until the end of the bout (which was about 9:30 p.m.) It was fun, though. Putting on a bout is such a team effort -- everyone pitches in to make it happen. Sick Town won, which was really exciting for me (it was the first time I've been at a bout where Sick Town has won, though I've seen some *amazing* play from my team).

Oh, and I got to skate in the rules demo at the beginning. Belle and I were the jammers. It was *so* fun. In all the pictures, we're smiling and laughing and just having a great time. You can tell how happy we are to be doing derby. If you look at the pictures of the team girls in the actual bout, you'll see a lot of that too -- the faces are almost always either determined and fierce, or grinning like Cheshire cats. I love it!

The bout, by the way, sold out!

Oh, and a big thank you to Atomic City for coming down from the tri-cities (eastern Washington) to bout us. At bouts, I always clap really loudly for the visiting team, because really ... we're all volunteers. We're all doing this for fun. It's cool of them to drive however many hours to come and play with us.

Anyway. Practice tonight! I'll most likely be with the beginners again, but that's OK. It's not like I've been demoted to beginner -- not at all. And it *is* a wonderful chance for me to work on my fundamentals. Truthfully, it'll probably get me ready to re-pass minimum skills much more than scrimmaging would (even though scrimmaging is awesome).

Outdoor Skating -- Woohoo!

Today, I skated outdoors with Belle and D-Train. Originally we were planning to just do the Willamette Park circuit a few times ... but then D got the idea to go out towards Philomath instead. It's more fun, and also we realized that we had enough people for it to count as a practice if we skated for two hours.

So we skated from Willamette Park to the bike path, and on the bike path out to like 63rd Street or so. We made it up the first hill. I have no doubt that if it had just been Belle and D, they would have gone all the way to Philomath. I felt like I was at about half of my endurance after getting up that hill, though, so we turned around. (They were both very sweet about it.)

When we go down a big hill on skates, we call it "bombing" the hill. Or at least, that's one way of going down. Bombing is when you just get low and enjoy the ride. (That's as opposed to snowplowing to control your speed, or going down backwards on your toe stops to *really* control your speed.)

I bombed the hill. And Oh. My. God ... it was such an awesome feeling. It was amazing. I wasn't scared at all, even though I was not doing anything to control my speed. It felt like flying. I'll bet we looked pretty cool, too -- three rollergirls zooming down a hill.

When we got back, we realized we needed to skate another 10 minutes or it wouldn't be two hours and wouldn't count as a practice (that matters more for D and Belle than it does for me, since I'm not scrimmage-eligible anyway, but at that point I felt like I'd come this far, I wanted it to count as a practice). So we ended up doing the Willamette circuit at the end. I was pretty tired by the time we started that. I figured it was a good idea to push myself past the point of "tired."

What a *great* way to start the day! I'm so glad I pushed myself. This today was definitely the farthest I have skated outdoors. Just the Willamette Park to 61st Street part was about 14 miles round trip, I think. (Google Maps seems to think so anyway.) And then the Willamette Park part probably added another two. So, yay us!

Bleah.

I'm sure I've mentioned Sick Town's rule that if you miss three weeks of practice, you have to re-pass minimum skills. I missed enough when I had pneumonia that I needed to re-pass. And then we all took a break for three weeks in July, so we all had to re-pass.

Tonight we had an all-league (well, except for the beginners) minimum skills assessment. I can't say for sure, but I *might* have passed if I had been able to skate 25 laps in 5 minutes. I skated 21 laps in 5 minutes. Not even close.

I used to be able to skate 25 in 5, when we were at the CDC (our warehouse). That was on better skating surfaces -- first grippy concrete, and then sport court. The surface at the fairgrounds sucks: slippery waxed concrete. I use my grippiest wheels on it, but of course they are also my slowest wheels. Using faster wheels isn't really an option. I am going to have to improve my speed on that floor, with those wheels.

We did the minimum skills assessment after scrimmaging (and I did a lot better than last week, so yay). But I'm not going to blame that for my inability to skate 25 in 5. Everyone else did it, and they all scrimmaged too.

I have to give myself a little credit, though: the 25 laps in 5 minutes was pretty early in the assessment, and I still put 100% effort into all of the remaining drills even though I knew I had not passed. I don't know if I passed everything, but I felt pretty good about everything. I even did the jump (and I'm fairly sure I passed that, at least). I did better on the booty-blocking, but I wouldn't be surprised if I didn't pass that part.

I feel pretty crappy tonight, but it's not like I fucked it up completely. I can get faster.

Practice tonight

Today, Charlie and I had to put our 15-year-old Corgi girl, Scout, to sleep. It had been a long time coming, but this weekend she declined sharply. This morning, we knew it was time.

I never considered not going to derby practice tonight, though -- at least not seriously. A good, hard workout sounded like a great idea to me. If I'm working my ass off to keep up with people who are in much better shape than I, I don't have time to feel sad.

Fortunately, tonight was endurance practice, run by Bones -- so a good, hard workout was exactly what we got. She used a practice that Suzy Hotrod (rock star jammer with the Gotham City derby team) taught at Rollercon. Oof. It was brutal, especially outdoors in 90-degree heat. I drank at least three liters of water (I finished off my big pink bottle halfway through, refilled it, and finished that off too).

I didn't have to drop out of anything (though I did wimp out of a follow-the-leader activity we did during a water break ... that was weeny of me, though there were lots of rocks and crap). But all of the drills? I kept up. Boosh!

I can't wait to see what fresh hell Bones has for us next Monday. ;-)

Scrimmage, bitches!

On Saturday, the Rose City Rollers (Portland's nationally-ranked derby team) held an open black-and-white scrimmage. It was $5, and open to any derby girl as long as she had WFTDA or USARS insurance. (So, basically, any girl who has been with a league long enough to have bought the insurance. I think probably everyone had passed minimum skills, but it wasn't a requirement.)

Since Sick Town has lost its warehouse, we've been scrambling for practice locations. So of course we jumped on the chance to go up and scrimmage at Rose City's hangar. I think there were nine of us who went.

At first, there were just enough girls on the white team and the black team (all of us Sick Town girls were on white) that we only had to play every other jam. Later, as more girls showed up, it got to the point where you'd get to play every third jam.

I got to skate with a lot of awesome girls, both from my league and from others (mostly RCR freshies, but there were some RCR team girls too, and a fair number of Cherry City (Salem) girls, Emerald City (Eugene) girls, and even a few from out of state.

I was able to keep up with the pack almost all the time!! It was harder when I fell and had to catch up, but even then, I managed. One *really* awesome thing was when the other team tried to trap me (this is a well-known derby strategy, to trap one opposing player so that your blockers and the trapped girl become the pack ... if the other opposing blockers are more than 20 feet ahead, they are then out of play and can't block your jammer). Well, they NEVER managed to trap me! I'm getting pretty good at spotting the holes and getting away ... which is good, because even though my speed is improving and will continue to improve, I'll never be the fastest girl on the track.

I think I'm having more of those wonderful moments where I feel like I know what I'm doing -- moments where I block someone effectively, escape a trap, hit someone out of bounds. I had a lot of those during the scrimmage on Saturday. (In the interest of honesty, I must also admit that I had a few boneheaded moments -- especially the one where I got up from having been knocked down, and tripped on my own skate and went down again. D'oh!)

Anyway, GOD that was fun. It was hot -- I think it got up to at least 97 on Saturday, and the hangar where Rose City practices and bouts is not air-conditioned (other than that, though, it's pretty awesome). But when I was skating, I didn't notice the heat. It was just fun.

Motha Frickin Sick Town!

Last night was my first Sick Town practice after the break. It felt *so* good to be back. Even better, I was able to keep up with just about everything. We ran through all of the skills in the minimum skills assessment, and the only things I didn't do at least somewhat successfully (no one was actually evaluating us) were the two-footed jump over an object (I jumped next to it), the booty blocking (but Bruiser gave me some tips and toward the end I think I really got it) and the 25 laps in 5 minutes. More on that one: I managed 24.5 laps. This was on the evil, slippery Linn County Fairgrounds floor, in my slowest wheels (Sure Grip Sugars, which are *awesome* on that surface -- there was no slip at all. I just need to get my speed up now). So I'm really considering 24.5 laps in 5 minutes a win. That's "shave off a little time and you've got it." Honestly, there were times I was coasting around the curves instead of doing crossovers, for some reason. Just changing that would probably fix the whole thing.

After we finished the skills, we did some scrimmage-y drills, and it was great. I didn't do fabulously well, but there were moments when I was effective at helping my jammer through the pack. That was cool. I didn't have much, if any, trouble keeping up with the pack (though I must admit that the pack was on the slow side). I'm having a little trouble understanding Sick Town's new wall-making strategy. Last night was the first time I had skated that way, and I don't think I "get it" yet. I hope we will get to do more scrimmage-type drills at practice, because honestly, they are a good way to work endurance and they are a lot more fun than skating laps. And the more I learn about strategy and how to be an effective blocker, the better prepared I will be when I am finally scrimmage-eligible.

One awesome thing: before Sick Town's break, I had been having a lot of fear while skating. I don't really know why. Part of it could have been that I was in the midst of changing antidepressants. I'm sure the fact that we had just lost our practice space and were skating on a lot of different surfaces didn't help either. But whatever the reason, I had become a big fraidy-cat on skates.

I think I have shaken that off. All of the solo outdoor skating I did during the break seems to have helped. When you're on your own, you kind of just have to push past the fear, or go home. Crossing streets and getting past scary obstacles like railroad tracks and these weird bumpy mats they have at the crosswalks in Corvallis probably helped too (it can't have hurt my agility, either).

Now I just have to work on control, speed and endurance ... and oh yeah, I have to repass minimum skills. Then I can scrimmage. Easy peasy, right? Right.