This girl will self-destruct in 10… 9…

Derby girls (and boys) are often described as being somewhat crazy and hardcore to do roller derby in the first place. I don’t know if the claim is true or not, and I don’t want to really get into that whole side of it. But training with the yellow stars (while they’re doing their orange star tests) is definitely a step up from the whities. As much as I think it’s important to make early derby training as accessible and friendly as possible for people learning how to skate, there comes a point when you really just want to be able to do get into the tough and aggressive smashy side of things.

We did pace lines with (non contact) weaving, whips, booty blocking, pushes and the like. But my favourite drill by far is the obstacle avoidance one. Basically, one person skates around the track while a pack of 4 other skaters spontaneously fall in front of them. The pack skaters can fall however they like; they don’t have to fall small or in any of the ways that you’re actually taught. The person skating has to avoid crashing into or tripping over the fallen skaters, and can do this by stepping around them or falling and then getting up, or (my favourite) jumping over them.

This is what you are trying to avoid doing (with skates on)

Boudica and I didn’t get tested on this tonight, because we’re pretty much the newest yellows and we aren’t getting tested to the same degree for our orange stars as everyone else. But we got to be part of the packs that fell in front of people. Sometimes strategy was needed to try and fuck it up for the person who is avoiding obstacles; sometimes it was just a matter of getting in front of them and getting all in their grill (or legs, as it were). But yeah, I certainly didn’t think that throwing myself under the wheels of oncoming skaters would be as fantastic as it was. I ended up doing a lot of really big sprawls; maybe it’s because I’m pretty little anyway so I wanted to spread out more to increase the potential for fuck-uppery. A lot of what I did was a cross between a superman dive and a starfish. I did slide a lot as well, which was cool. And once the person had avoided you, you basically skate as fast as you can to get in front of them and try again. Bahaha. I did manage to trip Ravish, and after a moment of satisfaction doing that (because she’s an awesome skater), then it was right back up to throw myself under her wheels again.

This is how I sprawl.

It was stupidly fun. Given that you’re pretty much not padded where your vital organs are, I’m surprised that nobody ruptured a kidney or got some wheels in their spleen. I did get some skates VERY close to my head, and I’ve been thinking a lot about whether or not skate helmets are really that good at preventing concussions. But I wasn’t kicked in the head or anything which was good. Hooray for not getting brain damage. And apart from a bruise on my sidebum(??) from constantly throwing my self on the ground in the same way, I didn’t get any real injuries.

I can’t wait until I get to do it again. And maybe this time, maybe I’ll get to avoid them so I can jump over people too. Yeah, maybe I do have a bit of a self-destructive streak.

Oh, and then after we got kicked out of the gym we decided to get our orange star fitness shit out of the way. This meant that a bunch of us did pushups and situps (5x10 of each) and planks (60 forward, 60 for each side) on either a hard concrete basketball court or a duck shit-covered wet patch of grass. Well, we are crazy and hardcore like that.