A bit of space.

Today I got a really nice message from someone who reads this saying that they missed my blog, and wishing me a good recovery. It was awesome to get some feedback and thank you so much for getting in touch. I suppose it's been a wee while and so an update is in order. VERY LITTLE OF THIS RELATES TO 8 WHEELS. Just letting you know, I won't be offended if you go watch Regionals. Totally cool with that.

My ankle continues to heal and I'm at the stage of putting a bit of weight on it and can lurch from one room to another without crutches. Unfortunately I totally destroyed my last cast due to my sheer amazingness and had to get a new one (this time in the colours of the Scottish rugby jersey, natch). Two more weeks, I'm out of plaster (saying "out of fibreglass" sounds wrong) and can start the road to recovery and getting rid of the extra kilo or two that has appeared on me. No biggie (unless I keep this up), losing weight isn't a scary prospect to me any more, but I'll be happier when I'm back to fighting fitness in more ways than one.

I'm currently on an epic road trip with my parents, who are over from the UK chasing Scotland chasing a place in the quarter-finals in the Rugby World Cup. I'm quite a fan of egg-chasing and have discovered a love and appreciation for sport in general since derby came into my life. So far we've been to three matches, had the crap scared out of us by Scotland's attempts to remember how to play rugby (we've won both games, but not easily), and watched a stripper confuse England even more so than usual against Argentina. Man, do Argentines know how to watch sport. Their Patriotic Bouncing Song in particular is pretty badass, and they have incredible taste in novelty hats.

Away from angry men in tight shorts, we've got out into south island's glorious scenery, met some penguins (realising a lifelong dream of mine to see some in the wild), ate far too much blue cheese and shouted at TVs a lot, both in public and from the comfort of various hotel room sofas. It's been brilliant so far, despite being slower than my parents unless I'm falling down or off something (two sets of stairs, a pavement and a shower stall at present count)

In addition to having the holiday of a lifetime with two wonderful people who I don't see nearly often enough (it's been two years since we were all together- a lot's happened), being away from Auckland, my job and roller derby has given me some well-deserved thinking time. So, after a week of sleeping incredibly soundly and just letting the gears shift down a notch or two, I'm now lying awake until dumb am as my mind reorganises itself like so much time-lapse Tetris.

What am I thinking so much about? The usual shit, mainly. Career, relationships (not just the romantic kind), future, all the wanky stuff that people have navel-gazed over since the dawn of bellybuttons. Happily, I have drawn a few conclusions, and I have this insane notion that by writing them down my brain might hit save game instead of going for the level up.

• I've figured out that this year has metaphorically punched me across the room and left me on the floor looking for teeth. Obvious that may sound, but my inability to acknowledge when I'm weak has meant this took me a while to process, let alone accept.
• Sometimes the only things that are going to heal the cracked bones is time and metal plates. The bruised feelings they don't make plates for, which leaves time. Just because it hurts now doesn't mean it will continue to do so, but right now you just have to grit teeth and breath through it. Occasional swearing is acceptable, but don't go on about it. (yes, I understand the irony of saying that whilst writing this. My blog etc. etc.)
• Without a plan or something to work towards I get a bit lost. Apparently I've inherited this from my mother, so blame genetics/nurture/being bloody difficult. I've lived longer in Auckland and been in the same job longer than I have anywhere since I left university. In 2003. Whilst this is a huge character flaw I can do something about it that isn't stay where I am.

A plan is coming together of sorts (based on many, many variables), but if I pull it off, then it could be all over between me and derby. She's not really the type to do a long distance relationship (though I know some people manage it). How do I feel about this? Well, I appreciate I write a blog about roller derby and not about, say, my job, or the works of Kyuss, the Black Keys and Clutch (for me, it's all about the beards in rock), derby isn't my life and never will be. It won't stop me from moving in a certain direction if that's going to be better for me in every other way. It would be hard to hang up my skates (and harder to say goodbye to my team, my league and my friends), it would be a decision I made based on what's best for me, at least based on all the knowledge available to me at the time.

I figure that in life, if you're smart, you don't make bad decisions. Just decisions based on the best data you have at the time. You might discover afterwards that you made the wrong call, but as least you made the best you could with what you had. this philosophy has kept the gremlins at bay for me on many an occasion. At the moment, I'm in research mode.

I'm rubbish at relaxing, I told you.

Can't sleep, derby will eat me...

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.