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 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!! :)