It's been a couple of days since I posted, due to nothing really exciting happening on Saturday (apart from visiting a depressing sheep-based tourist attraction and drinking beer in an attempt to get over it). Yesterday, however, made up for all manner of sub-par ruminant-watching.
Derby started back.
I hadn't planned on going, but after a lazy day at Parnell baths both sister and partner had decided they'd rather have a relaxed evening, and asked if I wanted to go practice. I was good, I managed to look a tiny bit nonchalant as I scrambled to find socks and pads, but inside I was so excited I could barely stop from bouncing up and down in the car. I am the opposite of cool sometimes.
Practice was taken by Ruby Disaster and Razor Czech of Mascara Massacre. They explained that, with less than a month to go until we sit our skills test, that the training sessions leading up to the test would be intense. They weren't kidding! After warm-up, we started with focusing on crossovers and our single-skate technique. After weeks of public skate sessions trying (and failing) to skate on my right leg round the required corner and straightaway, 15 minutes of proper coaching and I was flying. Much as I've loved spending time on my own working through stuff this summer, it was absolutely marvelous to get some proper coaching from women who really know what they're talking about!
After LOTS of crossover practice (including skating clockwise in a tight circle- guaranteed to make you feel a bit queasy) we moved onto stops and falls. I'm really pleased at how my t-stops have progressed, they passed scrutiny without comment and that's all good in my opinion! After almost two hours of accelerating, decelerating, downs, ups, it was time to do just ten timed laps.
OK, so on an empty rink and feeling relatively fresh, I can comfortably knock off 27 + laps in five minutes. With nobody else on the track I can choose my lines and take a route round the track (inside on corners, outside on straights) that lets me cross over the entire way around which helps me keep an even pace. After all the training, the intense humidity and temperature inside the rink, and the track full of other skaters still practicing falls, I was still able to do the ten in 2 minutes 1 second. I was initially pretty disappointed with that time, but in retrospect, I should be pretty happy with that. I had to skate around the outside of the rink almost the entire time, so I shouldn't complain about that. Much.
Afterwards, though, I was destroyed. I came off the rink and could barely form a coherent sentence, much to the amusement of partner and sister. It felt amazing.
Unfortunately, dinner was a pizza from Domino's, which is not the best food post-workout but L was pretty keen on the idea of fast food and I was too hungry to argue.
Amazingly, I'm not stiff at all today. Given that I had to leave in a hurry I had no time to stretch (bad skater!), but everything is where it's meant to be today, which I think I can thank my regular skating schedule for. However, my kneepads are now too big and came clean off my right knee when I was doing a 180 single knee fall, so my knee is now pretty sore and I need to get me some proper pads.
I couldn't sleep last night, my head was too full of derby. I was thinking about strategy, equipment, fitness, derby derby DERBY! I was saying to my partner recently that this is the first time in my whole life that I've been consumed by something. Everything else I've done, I've looked at the really experienced people and thought "how do they do that? How do they slog through the years of not being very good to get to being great? I don't have that kind of dedication, that level of patience". With derby, I discovered that I really have, all it needed was find something that I really, truly love.
Next training is on Thursday, L came to me after training and told me I really should make every training that's on while she's here. Family support = awesome.
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