New season, new opportunities.

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endurance, holidays, roster

Yeah, sorry for the unofficial christmas hiatus. There just hasn’t been much to write about during the holidays.

This week I returned to Trondheim and were able to return to derby practices again. My first ‘real’ derby practice this week was yesterday though, as the one on monday was a open training session for new, potential recruits, and I was ill (the cold) and sore (after being a bit too optimistic at the gym on monday), so I didn’t attend the practice on tuesday. But yesterday’s practice was awesome! We had intervals and endurance. Since I hadn’t practiced anything during christmas I thought my endurance would be at a low point, but the practice actually went well, and I didn’t feel I did that badly.

In about a week, they’re choosing the roster for our next two upcoming games. I’m really unsure of wether I will make the team or not. I get really optimistic when talking to some of our trainers who, of course, try to be really motivating and optimistic and say that anyone can make the team. But, if I think realistically, I know that there is a lot of great players who’s played for a lot longer than I have, and who have bouting experience and so on. And I really feel like all of my fellow fresh meats (although we’re not technically “fresh meat” anymore) are starting to get really good, and they may as well be picked in stead of me, for the few places left on the roster. 

But, I’m going to try as hard as hell anyway. I’m going to show up at every goddamn practice, and I’m going to work as hard as I can. I will not forgive myself if I don’t at least try. I really want this, and i really really want to become good in this sport. Yesterday, during endurance, I realized through the pain that endurance was also fun as well. That has never happened to me in any other sport before. I’m in love.

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Tough start

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endurance, falls, practice, stops

So, on monday we had another practice. After the kickoff being so intense, it was weird having to wait a week before I was able to skate again. So, at practice on monday I felt really uncertain during warm-up. It was the weirdest experience. It felt like I couldn’t do anything. My crossovers were nonexistent and I didn’t dare picking up speed in fear of falling.

After warm-up, the first thing we started working on was crossovers. I continued to feel like a klutz, but after a while one of our teachers came and corrected my derby stance, and everything clicked in my head after that, and I was back to where I was last monday, skating-wise. I guess some practices will be harder than others, and I’m glad I got to experience how that feels like and that it is possible to snap out of it.

Next, we worked on the different stops. Plow-stop, T-stop and turn around toe stop. All of them are definitely getting somewhere. Not perfect any of them, but I’m pretty sure of what I need to do to improve them.

After that we worked on different falls. Falls are fun! And not very hard I think. Except for the 180 knee fall, which is still a little uncontrolled for me. And for the first time, we got to try a baseball slide. It really looked much harder than it was, but it’s still hard to do perfectly. When doing it at much higher speeds than we did, it’s really important to not get anything but you pads on the floor, and that requires good core strength. It’s almost supposed to look like the sideways plank exercise.

Last, we did a endurance exercise called the pyramid. We were paired up, and were supposed to push and drag or be pushed or dragged around the track first once, then twice and so on up to five times around the track, and then down again. It was really tiresome, but it was more the muscles in my lower back that killed me rather than my lack of endurance. Which is sort of comforting. Time to strengthen those lower back muscles!

On october 8th and 10th there will be a skill test, where we will be able to advance to level 1 (all fresh meat start on level 0), and the practices until then will mostly focus on the skills required to pass that test. Which is really basic stuff, but fun non the less.

Next practice, I WILL try to take at least one picture, as I know how discouraging it is to read a wall of text. I tried to steal a video from facebook of us freshmeats doing baseball slides, but didn’t figure out how to embed it on here. Ah, well.