Bones is back!

Stitches-N-Bones, jammer par excellence and trainer par malevolence (just kidding!), was out with a concussion for about a month. Last night was her first night back in quite a while. She freaking *tortured* us!

So there's this drill we call "shopping carts," where we get into groups of 2, 3, 4, 5 (usually not more than that), and one skater either pushes or pulls the rest (who are in a single-file line). The people being pushed or pulled are supposed to get as low as they can.

Last night we did a new drill Bones dreamed up in her evil, brilliant mind. Here's how it worked:

We got in groups of 3 or 4. Each person pulled for one minute, then rotated to the back. This went on for 12 minutes. Then we stopped and switched directions, and did the whole thing again, for another 12 minutes.

After that we got a two-minute break to stretch our backs, drink water, etc. Then we did 12 minutes of pushing in the regular direction, followed by 12 minutes of pushing in the opposite direction.

Yep, 48 minutes of shopping carts. Chelle, Sugar and I were a group at the start, because Bones wanted us to have to work harder (in a group of three, everyone pulls/pushes four times, instead of just three). All three of us stuck with it for the entire drill -- we didn't stop at all. I was pretty proud of us for that.

For the second hour, we did pace lines and mostly worked on hitting. That was fun, though when we worked on timing of hits, it was tricky. I got praise from Bones for my regular hits (not the timed ones, where I had some trouble). Praise from Bones is always awesome.

At the end we flashdanced. What I love about flashdancing is that it feels so *very* good when we stop. :-) (Flashdancing: for five minutes we constantly step, one skate then the other, so there are only four wheels on the floor at a time. We're supposed to do this fast. When Bones blows the whistle, we touch the floor with our hands, jump, and go right back to flashdancing. We do this for five minutes. It hurts, a lot. But it feels so good to get through it!

I'm pretty sore today. It's a good thing.