Up in wine country

So, there are at least four roller derby leagues in this area. Hooray. League tourism is the best kind of tourism. Last night I drove up to train with Sonoma County Roller Derby. I contacted them a few weeks back and did the "Hey can I skate with you?" thing and they were really awesome about it and were all like "Sure! Come along, and check us out and here are all our training times" which sounded really friendly and awesome.

SCRD have been around since 2007 and got their WFTDA affiliation last year. They are a smaller league than BAD, but they have a travel team (the Wine Country Homewreckers... how is that for a name?!!) and also junior derby! Like, for reals. Little kids on skates. I don't know if they hit each other as much though. I don't know much about junior derby generally for that matter.

Anyway, SCRD have an open skate/newbie night on Tuesday, so I thought I would check it out first to gauge what their training levels are like. Plus, I wanted to get some skate on during the week and just work on some of my basic skills. So yeah, their ground is called The Wrecking Yard, and it's a relatively new venue. It's also on a main street in downtown Santa Rosa, so how's that for having a skating venue right in your face? Also, they have an AMAZING floor, which looks tiled but it so smooth and flat and fantastic to skate on. It's not sealed yet though so you're not allowed to bring drinks onto the trainng track. But yeah. Even walking across it to get to the locker room was awesome. I was excited to skate on it.

I went to their locker room and introduced myself to some of their skaters. Their social skate is open to everyone but mostly it's league people getting more training in, as well as a couple of newbies and junior skaters. One of them had the derby name "San Franpsycho" which I thought was mega cute. After I filled in their paperwork I handed it in and went to pay and found out something really awesome: Training is normally $5 but it's free to skaters who are visiting from another league! Hooray! How's that for being welcoming and awesome!

They have lockers in their locker room! I wish we had lockers.
Or a locker room, for that matter.

That night they also had a TV show crew or something recording a doco on their league, and apparently now I might be on some doco about roller derby. It apparently is showing in Australia and New Zealand later this year. Hahaha. But the host of the show (Bree) and the producer (Bob) were also putting skates on to have a roll around. Anyway, I might be famous. Ha ha.

Anyway, to training. I was mega excited to be skating on that super nice surface there, so I did a couple of laps before everyone else was on track just to get a feel for it. It was a really smooth surface and not stupidly slippery, but it was hard if you fell on it because there wasn't much give. But it wasn't terrible, and I felt good skating on it after a couple of pre-warmup warmup laps. And then it was warmup time, and the warmup was TWENTY-FIVE IN FIVE. Hahahaha. The last time I did that was... geez, I think it was before we even used the star system, like way back in July or something when we were still training on one court at ANU and I got like 22 or 23. But yeah, it was good. And I nailed it. :D

Oh, but then warmup wasn't over yet. Everyone sat down and did stretches (and introductions, and also went through league matters, which I found really interesting) and then there was more warmup. It was another 25 in 5. But this time it was ANTI-DERBY. Holy shit. I think I managed all 25 but just barely a split second before the whistle went to stop. Also, I need to get better at crossing on my anti-derby side.

OMG. SUCH A NICE FLOOR.

Then it was time for drills. The coach tonight was Pain, who's on their travel team. We did a booty blocking drill in groups of three. Basically, you started lying on your front on the jammer line (and so did 2 other people), and then when the whistle went you had to get to the front of the pack. When you were at the front, you had to booty block to stop the other people getting ahead of you. If you got ahead, then you booty blocked the other people. It was a good drill, and I was pretty quick getting up off the ground and to the front, but 1) I need to work on doing a really tight block (like when the other girls did it, it was like a derby sandwich) and 2) I almost elbowed someone when I did sprint elbows. Whoops. But it was a great learning experience. You basically did this for two laps, and then another three people would have a go. Those that weren't cleared for hitting just did the lying down bit and then they raced for two laps.

Then we did some lateral stepping drills. Basically, you walked sideways down to the end of the track and back. I still find this kind of hard, I don't know why. I can do it for a bit, but then I roll. Or because I have stupidly short legs I have to take twice as many steps as everyone so I look mega slow doing it. Hahaha. Lame sauce. But it was good, and then we did lateral stepping across the track. Like, you started on the inside line and then lateral stepped to the outside line, then you had to touch the outside line with your hand (so you had to stay low) and then move back to the inside line. Then, after doing that a few times, half the people kept doing it while the other half skated and did laps, using the people who were lateral moving as obstacles they needed to avoid. If you went over the track lines, you did pushups.

Actually, they're generally quite strict with stuff like listening when Pain is talking. Basically if you talk when she's talking, you do pushups. It worked, although the junior derby kids did quite a few pushups because they kept wanting to talk to the TV people...

What your feet are doing when you duck walk

Then, we did the duck walk. Basically you put your feet out sideways and walk so the insteps of your feet are pointing forwards and your wheels are perpendicular to where you are walking to. It helps if you bend your knees for that (although you do end up kinda bow legged ) but this helps with running starts when you aren't up on toe stops, and also for transitioning. So we did those a bit. Again, short legs = too many steps = mega slow at this. Haha.

And then after that we practiced stops. We only did Ts and Plows this time, but basically we put cones all down the room, and you just stopped at each cone. However, once you had come to a complete stop, you had to pick up speed before heading to the next cone, and you did this by running on your toe stops on the spot for a bit before skating up to the next cone and then stopping. Running on your toe stops is a big thing here. I think I did okay on that, but need to work on more toe stop work.

We also did 1 and 2-knee falls. But to make sure that we were falling properly and not doing "smashy-smashy" on our knees (as Pain called it), we practiced knee taps first. Basically, this is like doing lunges on skates. Not bad as a workout component, and it made sure you were careful with how you put your knees down. We did regular 1-knee falls, then 1-knee 180s (interestingly, people seemed to turn the same way regardless of which knee they were falling on??) and then 2-knees. I fucking love two knee slides. Sadly, my felted pads smeared lines of black and yellow melted felt and duct tape all over their nice floor, ha ha. But they didn't seem to mind too much.

Blue leopard print bleachers? MEGA CUTE.

Finally, we paired up and did pyramid laps. You skate one lap, then your partner does one. Then you skate two, and then your partner does two. And so on, going up to four laps per person and then coming back down. I liked this drill a lot. Your partner helps you count your laps, and then you count theirs and/or yell encouragement/abuse as they skate.

And then we were done! There wasn't any warmdown or anything, and people seemed to just want to take their skates off and go home or whatever. If you have jelly legs, they have these adorable bleachers with blue leopard print fabric and SCRD cushions (made out of old SCRD merch!) that you can lounge around on. I did a few warmdown laps because I liked their floor so much, and while I was doing that Pain and some of the other ladies were being interviewed for this roller derby documentary thing. Oh, and SCRD also has a newbies wall where they take your picture up next to their banner and then they print it out and it goes on their wall. Lady Sparks took my picture for the wall so it'll be there next week when I go again to training, whoo.