Slowly But Surely

I'm getting there. Slowly, very slowly.

Ofcourse, I am talking about the elusive crossover. Last night at practice, I did some crossover "swizzles", where your skates don't leave the floor, and you weave your feet in front of one another. That was something I'd been trying to do for a while, but had not had much success with. Last night I actually did a pretty good job doing them!! Yay!! Crossovers, here I come!!

I've been with the Hellions for a little over 3 months now, and am trying to get so I can meet my WFTDA (Women's Flat Track Derby Association) minimums which are needed for me to be able to skate with the rest of the girls. So far, the only minumums I can meet are:

-regular skating
-stops
-falls
-stepping
-squatting
-focusing
-leaning

The things I need to master to pass minimums are:

-crossovers
-speed/endurance
-one foot glides
-quick cuts
-recovery from falls within 2 seconds
-hopping (yikes!!)
-weaving
-whips
-pushes
-pacing
-weaving around moving obstacles
-bumping
-blocking (taking hits, checks)

When looking at these two lists it seems like I haven't made any progress!! But I have to keep remembering how I was on the first practice I came to, when I could barely stand on skates let alone have "confident and fluid strides" (per WFTDA). I'll continue to push towards getting these damn minimums met so I can then get my REAL derby name and not have to be known as Fake 'Um Steak 'Um anymore!!

Until next time, peeps (if anyone actually reads this). Derby love forever!!

The Hellions of Troy are having a Winter Break Party to raise money for one of our girls who was injured in practice. Please come if you can. C'mon, it's only 5 bucks and it goes to help a derby girl!!! :)

Derby Madness

Last night at derby practice something funny happened. I was skating with Flexi Wheeler, one of our best skaters (she's been skating for 40 years!!) and she asked me if I had done any contact stuff yet like blocking, hitting, etc. I had barely gotten out the word "No" when she bashed into me. I went down on one knee and recovered quickly, so that was pretty fun.

We continued to do a couple other maneuvers with her cutting in front of me and leaning against me. I think I fared pretty well. Flexi even said she was impressed at how solid I was on my skates when taking a block or with her leaning in on me. Yay!!

She got me out of my comfort zone a little too, getting me to skate a bit faster and trying to make me "put up or shut up" about crossovers. I just need to f-ing do them and not be afraid of falling!! Falling is not the end of the world!! hehehe Though, truth be told. I'm not at all afraid of falling forward, that's where all my protective gear is (knee pads, elbow pads, wrist guards). What I'm afraid of is falling backwards!! That really hurts!!

I think my main fear of crossovers is that I feel like I'm going to trip over my own feet. That's been know to happen to me just walking down the street, and now I'm trying to possibly do it on purpose?!? Yikes! ;) I am getting steadier and steadier on my skates by the day so I think it's only a matter of time until I can do them without being freaked out about falling. Flexi also said that with skating faster, you actually get a better sense of balance. So I will be working on that as well.

Mmmmmm, Sleeeeep

I love sleep. I really, really looooooove sleep.

Last night I slept for 13 hours (!). I wasn't planning on this, but there it is. I was talking on the phone with a friend and was then going to go to derby practice. So, after getting off the phone I was kinda tired so I decided to take a little nap. Well, that "nap" lasted until midnight, derby practice had long since ended and I was feeling bad about missing it. (I really need as much practice as possible to get those damn crossovers down!!)

So, it was midnight and I figured nothing else was going to get accomplished that night, so I went back to sleep and got up at 7am this morning. It's nice to sleep for that long sometimes. Get to catch up on all the missed sleep of the past couple of weeks. I just wish it hadn't happened on a practice night!!

Well, it's Friday. Only a couple more hours to the weekend. Have fun my bloggy peeps!

The Awakening

So.....this is awkward.

It's been over a year since I updated this thing. Oooops!!

I guess I'm not very good at this whole blogging thing. If I have something to say I usually just spew it out on whomever is around!!

So, since last time a whole bunch of stuff has gone down. Here we go:

Dana broke up with me around May-ish. It was far from mutual, though in the time that has passed, I have been able to get over this fact for the most part. We still lived together for a couple months while I was trying to find a new apartment as it was clear to me I wouldn't be able to do the "just friends/roommates" thing. Moved out in July. Cut off all ties completely in August due to not being able to handle the "just friends" thing. (to clarify, I thought I would be able to do the just friends thing once we weren't living together.....*BUZZZZZ* Wrong!!) So, as it stands now I am still seeing my counselor and dealing with all the crap related to this whole thing. This was the first relationship I had ever been in and therefore, the first break up. It's a lot to deal with all at once. According to my counselor, lesbians usually become friends with their ex's again. This seems a little dysfunctional to me, but we'll see what the future holds. I am not completely ruling out the possibility, but I definitely need more time to work stuff out before that happens. I did see Dana at a little coffee shop concert a while ago and it wasn't horrible. A little awkward, but we exchanged pleasantries and then went our seperate ways.

I joined the local roller derby team!! After dealing with all the doom and gloom of the above situation, I needed something to get my mind off things. I joined the Hellions of Troy roller derby league in September even though I have NO skating experience! Even as a kid, I was never a rollerskater, and now here I am strapping on my new $400 (!) skates and learning the ropes. I have progressed to being able to skate pretty confidently, I learned how to do T-stops, snow plows and every kind of fall you can imagine...single knee fall, double knee fall, baseball slide, and 180 degree knee fall. I just need to work on doing my crossovers and then getting into the more advanced derby techniques like blocking, turn around toe stops and jumping (yikes!). I haven't been able to skate with the pack yet, they skate a lot faster than I can right now!! When I first moved up to Albany, I went to go see the Albany team play and until I joined the Troy team I kept thinking how fun it all looked, but didn't have the guts to actually join the team. I decided to join the Troy team instead of the Albany team because the Troy team is more into the athletecism part of the game and becoming part of WFTDA (Women's Flat Track Derby Association, the national organization), and the Albany team is more about the show and exhibitionist part of derby.

So, that's all the craziness that's been going on and keeping me away from posting on here more regularly. I'm not making any promises, but hopefully I will update this damn thing more often!! :)