I have soft pyramids..

...According to the legendary Lucy in Disguise, on whom more later. Got that wired-as-a-rat-on-sherbet feeling (don't ask me how I know) so instead of sleeping it's blogging time again.

Today the weather was bloody glorious so instead of doing anything productive I took the motorbike out on a short ride, which turned into 460km and six hours round the Coromandel peninsula to Whangamata. The bike remains the wife to derby's mistress, which explains why the bike has been giving me a faintly accusing look every time I step out the house in tights and shorts instead of leathers. I've been riding now for about two years and I have to say, the increase in my fitness over that time has seen me become a much better rider. Not so much in road awareness and skills but from stamina. Bikes are demanding, physical things to ride, and I've gone from needing a stop every hour or so to being able to thrash out a good couple of hours in twisty terrain without feeling knackered. I'm at the stage where the bike needs refuelling more than I do, definitely a strong sign!


My baby, or Fatty Bum-Bum as she is affectionately known

In defiance of tradition, I did not treat every stop as an opportunity for chocolate, and kept fuelled with peanuts, Up and Go, lots of water and a few trim lattes. Apart from in Whangamata, when a chocolate fudge ball happened but I reckon that is an acceptable fail rate. Got home feeling pretty fatigued and stiff, with no time to do much but throw down some chilli beans and nachos (Mexican food makes me happy on a very basic level) and try to find Glenfield rink in time for training.

Tonight was all about learning to hit each other, something I've been looking forward to since I started training. I feel like I'm now very comfortable with all the falls and stops required for skills, and transitions are coming along nicely. Hitting, however, required some skills that I've not been able to practice, and damn did it show!

After a few frontal blocking drills, we got started on practicing skating around cones. Easy, thought I. Bugger that, thought my skates. Lucy in Disguise, our coach and Dead Wreckoning pivot, suggested I loosen my trucks. I loosen my trucks. Still crap. I appear to suffer from cone anxiety. It's weird, I can do everything required when there are no cones (weight on front/inside leg, legs apart, weight forward, knees to navigate etc.) but give me some cones (or jandals in this case) and I'm impressing nobody. I think part of it is not being able to practice this during public skating with actual cones out so I've only practiced it twice, but still it was a bit disappointing. Just need to relax and not worry about the actual cones I guess.

Finally came hitting practice, and with it the first bruises I've had from derby in some time! Nothing too major, just a daft but heavy fall when my skate got taken out from underneath me. Happened while stationary as well, just to add insult to the aforementioned injury. Actually physically blocking someone and being blocked felt fine though, and with an extra training on an upcoming Saturday (5th February to all who missed tonight!) I'm feeling pretty confident about being able to produce the goods on the 13th. We also got given some homework, which is to read through the updated rules regarding cutting the track. Cutting the track is being knocked out of bounds by another skater and coming back on the track in front of her. It's funny how the rules have crept into training as we've gone along. In the last few trainings there are way more discussions along the lines of "If I'd done that in a game, is it a minor/major/smacky-botty?". The answer appears to be yes in almost all cases BTW.

So, the pyramids. Glenfield doesn't have a derby track painted on it (yet) so no endurance practice for us tonight. I suggested doing some pyramids, and that was when I was reliably informed as to the softness of my current model (see earlier if you can be bothered). I picked up the pyramids drill at speed skating lessons, and again at AoteaRUMBLE, but for every drill there is an evil version and Disguise's one brings a new level of pain to the enterprise. Instead of stopping for 30 seconds between laps, you do a slow lap. On every straight of each fast lap, you do two lunges/single knee drops. My way is indeed the soft way, and I'm masochistic enough to want to find a quiet rink and do it the hard way. I think I may die...

Good derby strategy posts- like buses, apparently.

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...