So I woke up early this morning with jetlag by proxy, which is ironic as L continues to snooze rather soundly and appears to have fixed her body clock in super-quick time.
Luckily for me, the internet decided to post some of interesting articles about derby strategy and rules overnight to keep me occupied, and so I thought I'd share. I am making a concerted effort to learn rules and strategy (having realised that being able to transistion does not a good derby skater make) and articles like this are an excellent resource. If anyone out there has anything they think I should be reading, please let me know!
Hot Across Buns neatly sums up my thoughts on the Slow Derby controversy that surrounds high-end play these days. There's more out there on this than I really need to point to, needless to say Anya Face makes the argument better than me.
Over at Roller Derby: Inside Track, Tank makes a very interesting case against minor penalties. Not having scrimmaged myself yet I can't really say anything about the effect for players on cumulative minors, but having NSO'd and watched a few bouts I can imagine that no minor penalties could make for a very interesting change in the pace and style of play.
Still at Inside Track (seriously, if you're skating and not reading this website, you are missing out), Mike Chexx talks about the growing professionalism in derby and what this means for the sport. For my part, I started playing derby because I loved the counter-culture, fishnets-and-fuck-you aspect of the sport but after six months hard graft at the rink and beyond I'm playing it as a sport. Admittedly, I still adore the facepaint, the legwarmers, the familial love at the games and would rather play for fun with good people than in a rigorous, loveless training environment, but I've learned a lot about the athleticism involved and the potential that the sport has and would love to see it go in that direction. As Mike points out, there is a place for both professionalism and punk rock in derby if we play it the right way!
Straight-up tips from Wry and Ginger on how to counterblock a backwards shoulder hit, though the background makes the text difficult to read unless you've just sniffed a Vivid.
Finally, some Imperial-measures-using type (Hellions of Troy) has worked out how fast a skater needs to go to do 25 laps of a WFTDA track in 5 minutes. If I was going to be a stickler about it, I'd find out the length of the route round the track taken by most skaters (inside track on corners, going to the outside track on the middle of the straightaway to make a circle shape- means you can maintain a steady pace all the way around improving efficiency) but an average works fine for this. the comments section is fascinating too, especially on the reason the track os the shape it is (thank CAD and an odd-sized Texas rink!). During my fastest five minutes, I was averaging 11.8mph or 19km/h. I'm quite pleased with that.
Today we are mostly learning how to surf at Muriwai beach, which promises to be an interesting experience! Hopefully we'll get some quality beach time too as the weather is looking good. D wanted it known that his pizza last night was a healthy option, as he hardly used any cheese. An awesome cook and health-conscious? I am a very lucky girl...
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