Success

Major smugness today, I achieved one of the goals I set myself over the summer and I am damn proud of myself for it! At training today we finally had a timed 25 laps, just four skaters on the track at a time like it will be in the skills test. I'd hurt my left ankle a little falling over earlier in training (it wasn't all awesome), but gritted teeth and skated through it, collapsing in a heap in a very respectable 4 minutes and 27 seconds. I'd set myself the challenge of 4min 30sec, so I was over the bloody moon! It was also great to have my technique looked at by coach Pieces of Hate, who gave me a couple of tips on how to improve my technique and hopefully improve my time (longer strides and get lower, which I think I need tattooed on my knuckles!)

However, no success is 100% and I'd spent the main part of training getting pretty frustrated with my inability to do a couple of key skills. It's daft, I'd been told so many times that the 25 laps was THE hardest thing in the test, so I made it my mission to kick it's ass. Now we're revisiting things like jumping and skating halfway round the track on one leg and I am SUCKING.

Urrk'n Jerk'n of the Oly Rollers shows how skating on one leg can and should be done against Gotham Girls roller derby.


OK, not sucking exactly. Just not doing as well as I want to. I can jump as long as there's no obstacle, I can skate fine on one leg and I'm getting better at the other. I'm just not as good as I think I should be at these things, and it's making me regret not pushing myself harder in all the public skate sessions to really master them.

Funnily enough, I just spoke to partner about failing at jumping over obstacles. His repsonse? "Are you target fixating?". And just like that it makes more sense. I'd been so busy watching the obstacle and not where I was going that I kept hitting the deck. Now I just need to remember that for Thursday's penultimate training, and for the test itself. Two weeks and counting! It'll also be the day I take my February photo update, so we'll see how that goes.

In terms of diet, last night I had a few beers and some veggie burgers at a mate's barbecue, but apart from that I think I've been doing ok. Boiled eggs and toast for brunch this morning and a tofu and vegetable dry stirfry for dinner have kept me going today. Keeping my water intake as high as I can and finding that adding an electrolyte/dextrose supplement to my water at training means that my stamina is better than it was on just water. Cheers to Razor Czech for that tip!