All of the rookie fails.

Officially now I have bouted in a full (although not WTFDA sanctioned--that might be the next step) bout. Hooray! And I wasn't munted (well, severely). Hooray! The weather was awesome; a couple of us drove up to Appomattox together and it was nice to get the road tripping experience in as well.

I'll write more about the actual bout in a little while, but this is just a list of some of the things you should NOT do during your first bout.

Another thing that I should do for a bout:
Provide a picture for the program.
(But yay, I'm actually in a program!!)

I guess I didn't really have pre-bout jitters or anything; I did a bit of work earlier in the day, made myself two peanut butter and banana sandwiches, ate a stupid amount of breakfast burrito and packed my gear. We got to the skate place with plenty of time to spare, so there was no rush to get ready or gear up as we went to hit the track.

Then I went on to commit all the rookie mistakes possible in the history of roller derby.

During warmups we were doing the "three people in a wall and a jammer tries to break through the wall" drill and I got elbowed in the face and busted my lip. DURING WARMUPS. The bout hadn't even started yet and I was already bleeding. And the EMTs weren't getting there until right before the bout, so I had to stop warming up and go and wash out my mouth and mouthguard and everything, but there wasn't any ice so I just had a fat lip for the first part of the bout. Interestingly, getting elbowed in the mouth was exactly what happened in my first bout for Season's Beatings too. My prebout ritual is now eating a peanut butter and banana sandwich, and getting a bloody lip from a teammate. I'm 2 for 2.

Then, when the bout was about to start, I fucked up the rollout by almost plowing into our bench manager.We were doing an intro when we skated around the track in a pack, and when your name was called, you skated a lap, high fiving the other team as you went, and then rejoined the back of the pack.

What normal people did.

Gritz was announcing, and she had a little description of everyone based on their derby names. So mine was something about "cruel and unusual punishment", and then I got very excited and started skating my lap. We were right about to go into turn 3 when I started. I took the corner too fast and almost smashed straight into Smack in the high five line, but she was right in front of the Blackwater team so I could either skate into her, or into the opposing team. I think I made the right choice. :P Still, that was embarassing as fuck. I don't even know how that happened.

What I ended up doing. FML.

I also managed to projectile vomit (well only a little bit) on myself and possibly an opposing blocker in the second half of the bout. I was jamming and back blocked someone. But I backblocked them so hard and because they were taller than me their butt basically went into my stomach.

The drill, or the jam, or whatever.

The downside was that I was full of gatorade and breakfast burrito and bananas and water and clif bars and it was like getting punched in the stomach, and all that predigested food had to go somewhere, so as I sat in the box it came up a little. It wasn't like I was skating and barfing on the track at the same time, but it was enough that I had little chunks of undigested gatorade-clif bars-banana on my wrist guard and in my mouth guard and a bit on my pants. Go me. And I was only in the box for four seconds, so I wasn't feeling too amazing when I got out and finished the jam.

But seriously. Who the fuck does that?! At least I didn't puke on the track. It would have been worse if they had to stop the bout because I had barfed all over the track and it was ruining people's skates.

I think those were the main things that one should probably not do in their first bout. Okay, so maybe I didn't commit ALL of the rookie mistakes in history. I didn't forearms anyone, I didn't multiplayer block anyone, I didn't hit anyone with my elbows (I think). I spent a total of FOUR SECONDS in the box for the entire bout. I'm not sure if that means I wasn't working hard enough or something. Or maybe I was playing very cleanly.

I hope this means I won't be such a derp in my future bouts. I just get a bit overexcited at the prospect of actually bouting. Hopefully that is all (or mostly) out of my system. No pun intended, but you get the idea.

But it was fun, and I learned a lot from it, whee! More on the actual bout later.