SCRD training, for realz yo!

Sparks uses this as the junior derby logo.

So, I went to a full SCRD training yesterday. Full training is like their league training, and league members have to attend 66% of trainings per month (or 50% if you live over 50 miles away). We live over 50 miles away. Actually, it's a pretty big time sink going to SCRD--yesterday I left home at 5:30pm for a 7pm training, and I was STILL late because the traffic out of the city is mega ridiculous. Argh. At least they have offskates training from 7-8, and then onskates 8-10, so it wasn't like I was super super late. Also, they have junior derby until 7:30, so offskates takes place on the side of the track. When we got there, people were doing stretches and whatnot, but nothing really substantial seemed to have taken place yet. We did a lot of hops and agility stuff (jumping side to side, forwards/backwards etc.) until the jr.derby kids were done, and then we did a bunch of side runs and grapevines up and down the length of the room. It was a good warmup; people were already sweaty after it.

Then it was skates on time. D. Enforcer and Roxxxy took us through warmup stuff, which was a 25 in 5. Apparently up in Mendo they do a 25 in 4, and that's what I really want to work towards. D was timing us (in groups really) and I managed to finish in a bit over 4:30, so that was good. Then Felony Assault took us through some stretching, and then it was pace lines! D made us do pace lines where your hand had to be on the back of the person in front of you, and the person who was weaving through the pace line had to go UNDER your arm. Actually, D said that she was talking to someone about me and said that I was "small and could fit through all kinds of holes", haha. I am goddamn famous.

I didn't have much trouble doing the drill (except I kept being really dumb and going on the outside on corners, WTF?). Okay, but my stumpy arms made it pretty hard for everyone else who had to go under mine, because it's short and an "arm's length" for me is not very much at all. I got headbutted a whole bunch of times, and I hit someone in the face with my arm. Whoops. Also the person behind me grabbed the back of my shirt and almost undid my bra as we were skating. Awks. We did that drill a bunch of times, and then backwards weaving too. The only thing was that my left hip flexor thingy was a bit sore, and my right ankle was angry at me after all the pace lines. At least when we had water breaks, I could stretch it out a bit.

Then we did the boomerang drill again; 2 minutes derby direction, 1 minute break, 2 minutes anti-derby. We did that a whole heap of times, at least for 20 minutes. Then we did shopping carts with the same time limites (2/1/2) but switching with your partner every two laps.

Overall training wasn't too bad, and I really liked the level it was pitched at.  But then Rizzo had us all go offskates at the end and we did more strength and agility work! I really like agility drills. But first we had to flip tires. Like, for reals. I've never seen giant monster truck tires before, but holy crap. They were fat enough to come up to my thigh, and I could EASILY have fit in it, twice. But Rizzo got us to flip them down the length of the room and back, and then the second time you had to jump into the tire hole and then out, then run around the tire, and THEN flip it. ARGH. Seriously. It was kind of hard for me to flip the tire because I'm so short, so I could lift it and then I would have to get under it to push it over, and I couldn't steer it to save my life. I flipped it into the wall, into the person next to me and somehow onto its side so it rolled, hahaha.

It sure goddamn is, hahaha. But the tires were bigger for us.

Then we did a bunch of agility ladder things. I love agility ladders, thanks to offskates VDL training and more agility ladder stuff with BAD. They're so fun. I want to be able to do all the stuff we do with agility ladders offskates but with my skates on (probably on my toe stops; having the wheels down might get caught on the rope bits of the ladder). But yeah, that's something to work towards. Next training is on Monday! Scrimmage!! Yay!