So back at VDL there was a bout yesterday. This was their second bout ever, and with almost full benches! I'm so proud of my ladies there. Apparently it was also a super close game, which makes it all the more awesome.
Eventually the Cheerbleeders won 213 - 191 over the PhDemons, but at half time the Demons were in the lead. I'm not sure if they do MVPs or whatnot, but hey, from the pictures it looked like there was some ass kickery going on (and no reported muntings, hooray). It's weird because of the people that skated in the bout yesterday, less than half of them were in my cohort and there are fewer people that I know there. It's a bit sad, but hey I'm over here having a proud, so whatevs.
On Tuesday at training we had our first in a series of guest
trainers from Canberra Roller Derby League who were going to come and teach us
some new tricks. I almost didn’t go because of Ph.D. dramas, but I ended up
going and I am so fucking glad I did.
Firstly, Bambi was a great coach; I think she’d give Pain
from SCRD a run for her money. She was really good at explaining stuff and what
the strategy was for doing things and how to apply it and also just some general
stuff about learning in derby, which was useful since obviously she’d been
where we were. Shorty didn’t really say much but gave people a lot of
one-on-one pointers and did a lot of demo type stuff. She’s pretty damn funny
though.
Warmup was dynamic stretching and then some endurance type
stuff; we did 15 laps of the track anti-derby, then 30 squat jumps (on skates!)
and then 30 “dead bugs” which seemed to be really similar to bicycles but you
have the same arm and leg going instead of the opposite ones (see video). Then it was 10
laps derby direction, 20 squat jumps and dead bugs, then 5 laps and 10 squat
jumps and dead bugs. Wheeeeeeee.
Our first drill we did was explosive something something.
:P I can't remember the name. Basically, you paired up with someone and they put their toe stops down (or
plow stop, or whatever) and you had to push them. Running on your toe stops for
this was really useful, rather than just on your skates. I’d done some of this
at SCRD, and I really like running on my toe stops, so yeah I was excited for
this drill.
I was MUCH more excited when people paired off with others
of roughly their size and I was the odd one left and got paired up with Shorty.
Squee indeed. AND THEN I FOUND OUT SHE IS TALLER THAN ME. DAMMIT. Anyway, yeah
so I did a bunch of laps of the track pushing her around, and then she had a
go. My weak ankle (the right one) is mega dumb and doesn’t steer very well and
I kept going in circles, which was kind of embarrassing. :( It worked much better when I was basically in plow stop position but on my toe stops so my feet were more pigeon toed, than straight. But yeah, I made
her push pretty hard, and I have all the marks on my shoulders to prove it from
where she was digging her hands into my shoulder meat :P
Then the variation after that was to push someone with your
shoulder, so your pec was basically pushing theirs (and you had to keep your
head out of the way so you weren’t going to headbutt the other person). I found
this harder because when I run on toe stops I swing my arms a lot, and I
wouldn’t have been able to do that without punching Shorty in the crotch or
something. But yeah, that was a fun drill. :D
A scrum start. White would usually be taking a knee right on the
line and black would be standing but as close to them as
possible without touching. (Also because of my craptastic
paint skills it looks like the outside white blocker is leaving
an opening for the white jammer or something. Yep.)
Next, we worked on using the toe stop push to get through a pack. Bambi said that teams were more likely to do scrum starts now (i.e. have everyone at the jammer line), so once the jammer is released they immediately have to get through the pack, usually if one team knee started at the jammer line. Usually in these cases the blockers would make a wall, such that you'd have all four blockers in a line across the track, covering both inside and outside lines at the same time.
We worked on several techniques for breaking walls. Walls can be made of seriously ANY number of blockers, so we practiced a bunch of different things. Basically, the key thing in all wall-breaking cases was to pick some spot--either between two blockers, or pushing one blocker out of the way to create a gap--and then go for it. We started with a wall of three (with a fourth one bracing) and trying to get a jammer to bust through. I found the running-on-toe-stops thing quite useful for pushing through blockers.
Then we did wall-busting in between two blockers. Importantly, in a game situation your blockers won't be completely stuck shoulder-to-hip together, but might be slightly spaced apart, so there is naturally a gap to get through. We tried a bunch of different things in a "jammer against two blockers" scenario:
Shoulder charge: basically you use your shoulder like a battering ram and aim for the the back of the blockers' arms, or straight through the gap that is between them.
Kidney punch: I like this one a lot! You keep your head down and use your shoulders to basically hit the blockers in their kidneys. Seriously. Be careful not to headbutt them or (as I did) get my head stuck in the gap between the blockers.
Shark attack: you start low and "pop up" between the blockers. I think you can use the back of your shoulders to push them out of the way.
Stepping through: If there's a big enough gap between where the blockers have their feet, get down and step through it to get past them. This is hard to do quickly, but it's essential that you actually do it quickly, or else you get stuck.
Here's Shorty doing the shark thingy at TGSS (although it might have started as a kidney punch):
Photo: Steve Craddock
You can also combine them: for example, you can start low and step
through between blockers and then pop up in a shark attack. Or you can do the shoulder charge and when the gap comes up you step through. What's
important is that you have the element of surprise. For the record, Rubi
and I were the "demo people" for Shorty demonstrating surprise, which
was hilarious because obviously we knew she was going to bust between
us, but then when she actually did I think her charging into me actually
propelled me like 3 metres or something, and I was screaming the whole
time.
Finally, we did some juking. For this drill, we paired off and you had to get past your partner who was booty blocking you. There were a couple of things to pay attention to. Juking is a combination of speed and agility--I think Bambi said that Bonnie D. Stroir said that there's some sweet spot where your speed and agility meet, such that you're maximally agile while not plowing into the back of people (and getting called for back blocking). Basically, the idea is that you only juke as fast as you can skate while being agile.
Attempted juking diagram. Basically, the
jammer skates straight up to the PoNR and
then does the 3-step thingy to get around the
blocker (clearly not to scale.)
Bambi described something called the "point of no return" or something--basically you should only juke when the blocker can't see your feet. If they can see your feet, they are likely to know what you are going to do. So you should skate up to them as close as you can before busting out your juke moves. (This is also where the speed/agility thing is important; if you skate too close to them and can't stop, you back block them.) We practiced doing a three-step juke, basically you go left-right-left or right-left-right and then around the blocker. It also helped if you confused your blocker by making them look over both shoulders. Crossing seemed to be quite useful here, although not necessary (if you can also clumsily stomp to either side for the juke).
Another way you could juke is by basically fast feeting (feeting?? WTF) behind the blocker, and then getting past them because they don't know what your footwork is doing. Also, one thing to do is to get your foot in front of theirs and block them with your hip/shoulder. If your foot is in front of your opposing blocker's, when the block you they'll actually be pushing you forward. (I found this kind of hard to do without wheel clipping, but maybe I just need to work on that more.)
And then there was a bit of a strategy chat while we warmed down, and then we were done! It was seriously an awesome session; I probably learned more in those two hours than I have for a very long time. Also, I was a bit of a nerd and got RefDonald to take a picture of me with Shorty at the end. Yeah.
When we were taking this Shorty was like,
"Yeah you have to go Asian style". Heh.
(Also, photobomb by Bambi.)
Okay, first off, I have NO idea why it's called that. Seriously.
Now that that's out of the way, this is one of the funner drills we've done lately. It's pretty easy to understand: basically, you have two groups on the track of equal number. One group are blockers, and the other group are jammers. Yes, so you can have like 4-5+ jammers on the track at the same time. The aim for the jamming group is to get all their members out through the pack, and obviously the blocking group is to prevent that from happening. If you did a major, you had to reenter from the back of the pack and try getting through it again. Then after all the jammers were through, you swapped.
We had about 5 people in each group. We tried two variations of this drill: first, if you were jamming and made it out of the pack, that was all well and good and you were done, or you could go back into the pack and help other jammers through (but you didn't have to get through the pack again). The other version required ALL the jammers to get through the pack together, such that if you ate the baby (i.e. got reabsorbed by the pack) you had to try to get out again, and the drill wasn't over until all the jammers were clearly out together. That one was crazy hard because the blockers just kept speeding up to make sure the jammers couldn't pass and we ended up with the crazy 70-foot rule thing happening. I'd never seen it before but when everyone was so spread out it was seriously like WTF. But I think the non-eating-the-baby-version worked much better, in terms of organisation and pack structure.
We did this as a scrimmaging drill, but obviously if you're not cleared for hitting you can do this drill with positional blocking or something.Keeping the pack together was tricky. But this is a fast-paced drill,
and lets you focus on offensive or defensive blocking. Helping out team
members was also really important. But yeah! Mega fun drill, and one I'd like to do again.
I also had a job interview in December, and because it was a US school the time difference meant that I was skyping with them at 1am. Interview prep is kind of stressful, but to relax I decided to take a break from it and go to training the night of the interview, which also happened to be my last night of training for the year. Of course, I decided to scrimmage (since it was also my first scrimmage back from injury). It felt really good to scrim again.
Sarge split teams for scrimmaging so that the PhDemons and Cheerbleeders could practice for their bout in February. I mostly pivoted and blocked since I'm not going to be at the bout and it'd be kind of unfair to take up time jamming when others could practice that. Anyway, at one point in the scrim I think Malice hit Junky (who was skating for the PhDemons) and she elbowed me IN THE EYE. She got sent off for the first ever block to the head at VDL, and I copped a black eye and a cut (maybe from the velcro on her elbow pad, or maybe from the force of the elbow splitting the skin or something?), and people brought me ice and were really nice about it but still, there it was, right in time for a job interview.
Oh yeah, and the interview was on a HD Webcam so they could see everything.
This is how it looked the day after, when I had iced it a whole bunch and tried to put concealer over it:
I like how it kind of looks like a smiley face.
Also, in that scrim we won and got the first-ever score over 100 points. Yay us.
1) It rained a lot and the roof leaked onto the track.
2) I got back on skates after a month of injury and got my orange star.
I was injury-paranoid so I taped up BOTH of my ankles.
I would have also taped my knee as well except I ran out of tape.
Yep. Getting back on skates was so awesome. I was kind of stupidly nervous though, like my legs wouldn't know what to do or anything like that. So I was really conscious of being down in derby stance, pushing hard on crossovers, and that sort of thing. But it all came back pretty easily, and after a few laps I was back (except for when I nearly crashed into the bin that was on the track to catch the rain). I have to stretch my ankle a lot more though, because it's still pretty weak, and I was feeling it after a while. Rav took people through training, and Sarge and Legz took me through the remainder of my orange star test. Gah! WTF! So apparently what I had left was booty blocking, whips/pushes, and jumping over cones.
What? Jumps? Hahaha. I was so nervous about that. I'm usually okay with jumps, but I was worried that the force of it would be too much on my munty feet. But anyway, there were a bunch of cones set up and I NAILED IT IN ONE. Part of it was probably because I didn't want to do have to do it multiple times, but I also happened to jump over like seven or eight cones instead of the standard five, because Legz had put two cone-tracks next to each other (one was for people to do the one-leg slalom thing for yellow star). Haha. I'm dumb.
But yeah, then it was booty blocking, whips and pushes. Jillie was partnered up with me for this, and she's kind of mega awesome at skating so I was a bit worried I wouldn't be able to booty block her, or whip her (haha, last time I whipped anyone I ended up on my ass with a concussion). But she was a really good partner and gave me pointers for what to do (we had to skate around other people doing drills). So yeah, that was all good. Then Sarge and Legz tallied up the marks and I passed and got my star! Whoo!! (It was also the last session they were starring people for the year, so I totally squeaked in--no pun intended--to getting my orange.)
But when you have an orange star, you can be drafted onto a team. We got our first two teams announced as well: since we have a varisty themed league, our teams were the Ph.Demons, and the Cheerbleeders! And I'm a Cheerbleeder. Whoo! Sarge picked the names of all the oranges out of a hat and split them randomly, making adjustments for evening up the size, skill, experience etc. of the players. Boudica got drafted onto the Ph.Demons; Sarge split up me and my derby wife! Noes!!! But on the upside, this means I get to beat up my wife in the future, heh.
Oh, fine, so maybe three things happened last night:
3) I got drafted onto the inaugural VDL intraleague team.
I didn't scrimmage last night, but while I was NSO-ing (as the WORST NSO
ever since I was wasn't even non-skating :P) I practiced doing some
tomohawks and shooting the duck. Ha. Tomorrow is my last training
session with VDL until March, and that sucks a bit. Sad face. I really
want to scrimmage and 1) live up to my "Most likely to be ejected" shirt
and 2) get more use out of my scrimmage tank and 3) try NOT to hipcheck everyone in the knee.
So yesterday we had our end-of-year league BBQ by the skate park. It was pretty awesome. It was sunny and people got drunk and/or skated and I seriously made the worst "Bad Santa" present in the history of shit presents. (I'm really sorry, Bev!) Pictures to come.
This is how I feel my level of skating will be.
And [insert fanfare] today is my return to onskates! Yay!! I am going to be back from the wilderness. After being away in late October for 2 weeks and then basically getting on skates and then wrecking my ankle, I haven't had a proper skate since the time I had a concussion. (Yes, and THAT turned out well...) But yes. I have both my ankles and my knee taped up, and I am mega excited.
Also, no scrimmaging yet; my ankles need to get used to the weight of my skates first, before the weight of my skates AND several derby girls piling up on top of it. But yay. Being able to roll around is a welcome first step.
Oh, except I have to do the remainder of my orange star test. From memory, I have to do booty blocking, agility (jumping over cones), and obstacle avoidance. I have two more sessions before the end of the year and we break for the
summer (I miss the last session because I'll be overseas, boo), so if I want to orange before then, it's tonight and Tuesday. I thought I'd do it Tuesday, and spend tonight kind of getting used to being on wheels.
But no. Sarge has other plans for me. Hilariously enough, this is how I found out:
WAT.
I REALLY want my orange, but I'm kind of scared I won't remember how to skate and I will fail the test or munt myself more. In particular, I'm worried that my muscles will have atrophied or something or that I won't have stability (not that I had much to start with) or that my derby stance will be shithouse. Ergh. For some reason this is much more nerve-wracking than when Boudica and I did our yellow star, maybe because last time we did ours together and now I am flying solo (she got hers when she smashed the test a few weeks ago).
So, today was the big day. Team breakfast at 8am (where I ate my own breakfast and part of Sarge's and half of Diazeslam's raisin toast and some extra hash browns and grilled tomatoes--I fucking love hash browns). The team was obviously pretty nervous; of all the teams at the challenge ours was the only one with no bouting experience. Anyway, preparation for the challenge also involved going to the supermarket and buying the following:
One slab of 60 bottles of water
30 bottles of gatorade
1 box of oreos
6 bags of candy
2 boxes of those nutri-grain cereal bars
A fuckload of bananas
After that it was on to the Cannery. Basically, the Cannery is this giant shed that CRDL has which is taken up mostly by a giant concrete derby track. Anyway, there was a quick team meeting, then gearing up and getting ready for our first bout aginst a CRDL team. Whambulance was also nice enough to tape up my ankle so it didn't look all fucked up. It was a better job than I did, so yeah.
Excellent strapping job, Whambo.
Anyway, then we set up our bench. But boo, early on crapballs: I got sacked from benching because you were only allowed one benchie and the designated alternate (who was Sarge). So Bubbles had to do lineups and panty bitching and give people water and write their numbers on and everything. On the other hand, this meant that I had a free ticket to watch the bout!
I don't actually remember that much about that bout except I was yelling a lot. I think VDL was psyching itself out and it showed. One thing I noticed happened a lot was that the blockers weren't really helping out their jammer, so the jammer would be pinned behind a whole row of CRDL blockers and our blockers would be skating ahead. And there was too much bossing around and shouting and getting aggro at people from the bench which made it kind of hard for the skaters to hear actual instructions from Sarge.
Lineup sheet, Bout 2, 1st half.
Marie was the first casualty of the day by copping a shoulder (I think?) to the face and almost breaking her nose. I didn't see what happened (Boudica and I got sent on a mission to get a big fat permanent marker to write people's numbers on their sweaty arms) but we got back just in time to see her fall. Then she got up and had a towel over her nose and was icing it a whole bunch and stuff. That was kind of scary. Anyway, I don't really remember that much as I said, but the final score was 21-180-something or something like that.
Clearly people were rattled after the first bout. I guess that is to be expected; if this is a baptism by fire, then it really was a fucking good one. Marie was still out, and Sarge had a serious talking-to with everyone to make sure that they listened to him when he was yelling out instructions from the bench and stuff. Bubbles and I were frantically redoing the lineups since we had to take Marie (injury) and Rubi (exam) out of it. Also, note to self: remember that there are two halves of the bout; so you need about 40 lineups, not 20. :P Oh yeah and there was some general VDL/CRDL interesting interactions; most of them were really nice, and I guess it was weird to expect anything from how that was going to go. But I did wish I got a photo of me standing next to Bo-Rap; she was on skates (so taller than ever) and I had jandals on. I think the top of my head reached her boob. Ha.
Anyway, then suddenly it was time for the second bout. This time it was "Team Potluck", which was a combination of people from a bunch of other leagues. I was benching this one, and holy shit I was hoping that everything would go well. The first half was awesome! NO MAJORS FROM ANYONE!! That made doing lineups SO much easier. I feel that I need to yell more sometimes and be a bit more assertive, but for most part I think it went well. Plus scorewise we were doing pretty good: we were like 30-something in the first half (which was more than tht total score for the previous bout) and the margin was HEAPS smaller.
And then there were like 4 injuries in the second half! Legz fell and fucked up her ankle or something, and Diazeslam might have broken her wrist. Tank got shouldered in the neck (WTF??? And nobody called anyone on a major for that) and Junk got smashed in the knee. I was frantically amending the lineup every couple of minutes or so; originally Bubbles and I had the plan to have two lineups that we could rotate, but then we just ran out of people. I felt kind of bad making people do like 3 jams in a row or something but we just didn't have enough skaters for that. :/
There were also a few dodgy calls. There was one when Jillie was jamming and BOTH the jam refs were calling no lead jammer... wtf? And a lot of hitting out of target zones happened, and cutting, and not much seemed to be called. I understand that everyone's still learning though, so yeah. Early days for all of us. Sarge did put in a formal complaint I think though.
2nd half lineup sheet. You will note that shit got crazy around Jam 8-9.
We didn't have enough people to continue the bout (we were down to a full lineup and maybe 2-3 on the bench), so we called it. The final score was 57-81, which I reckon was fucking awesome. I think I ended up doing an okay job for seriously having seconds to make decisions about the lineup as people got taken out of it due to injury, and we didn't have too terrible a time. Plus afterwards I got to hobble around the track and high five the random PotLuck people, not that I had any idea who they were. But yeah, overall, I think we did a really good job in the second bout and recovered a lot to pull the score as close as it was. So, hooray. :)
Oh yeah and I met ShortStop! Like about fucking time. Brad was running the BBQ and I wanted to get some food in me before the second bout (which was the one that I was benching) so I went to get a vegie burger and she was there! And Brad was all like "Shorty have you met Mouse, she is like your evil twin who is following
you. She had a party on the weekend and all the derby girls were at your
party first and you both have pikachu costumes although hers is sexier" or something. Hahahaha. And then there was no tomato sauce because someone put out like 4L of BBQ sauce or something instead so she got some and put some on my burger for me. Hahahaha.
In other news, VDL is doing its FIRST EVER IN THE ENTIRE WHOLE WORLD bout on Saturday! This is extremely exciting news, since this is the kind of thing we have been working towards. A while back, I was listed on the roster but needed to get my orange star before I could. But then everything went to shit and because I was overseas and I am now injured there is no way I was going to be able to bout. Boo.
Bubbles' lineup list
But here's the silver lining. I can't bout, but I can still be on the team (technically speaking), because they need bench bitches! Bubbles (who was also injured) and I are officially the team benchies, which means that we are in charge of making sure the skaters line up in the right order for the upcoming jams and seeing who can go on in what position and making sure people get enough breaks and there are enough people on the track and whatever. Specifically, she's doing lineups and I'm panty bitch, which means I make sure people have the right helmet panties and also track penalties so we don't send a jammer in on their third minor or something stupid like that. Sarge and Marie (as captain) will also be in charge of strategy.
Homemade penalty tracking list, v. 1 I can't find a blank one on the internet, WTF??
Bubbles and I had a practice go at doing our benching jobs yesterday. Holy crap, benching is fucking hard and also frustrating! Seriously, we set up about 20 lineups in advance, and only the first one actually turned out the way that we wanted. It's really hard to do a lineup because you might have someone in it but then they are already in the bin, in which case you have a split second decision to put someone else in. And you have to take into consideration things like jammer positions are much more brutal and exhausting (so it seems) than blocking, so you can put a jammer in for one jam, but not for multiple jams in a row, whereas you can for someone who is a blocker. And then you also need to think about the fitness levels and individual skills of the skaters; some of them will be able to do multiple jams, then have one jam off, and then go back in. Some will need more than one. Sometimes you will have a really good combo that will work against particular people on another team. And you need to factor ALL of this stuff in in less than 2 minutes, while keeping in check who is in the box and how many minors/majors they have!
Homemde penalty tracking list, v.2. I don't *technically* need that last "minor" column, since that many minors and you're ejected. But oh well. For the sake of completeness, why the hell not? (Also, anal retentiveness compelled me to list skaters in alphanetical order.)
Seriously. It's challenging in this really interesting way, and I think I can grow to like it. Of course, it's not as awesome as being able to actually skate in the jams, but it is something I think I might like doing. I like putting things into different combinations, and making sure that official shit goes down as it should. It's pretty administrative in a way, but benching is an important role and probably one that would be just as important to master the skills of, as well as skating.
I still want my ankle to get better though. But yay, new skills.
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.
So Boudica and I were supposed to go for our yellow stars on Sunday, with Pitts and possibly Jaxhammer as well. After training on Sunday, I booked the gym hall for an hour today so we could have a skate around and run through the test as a practice. I told Sarge about it on Tuesday, and he was like "oh cool I'm not doing anything on Thursday so I can come down and have a look and give you some pointers" which was super cool of him.
Check out my helmet. Also note WFTDA rules test on the floor.
Anyway, so we show up there and set up the track. And then we started going through the test. We did our 5-in-1 first, which is basically doing 5 laps in a minute to pass. I fucking stupidly played soccer yesterday and corked my left thigh and had a mega bruise on my right (just where the kneepad sat). So putting weight on my left leg was kind of shitballs. And of course there's a lot of that when you're crossing and it's your inside leg. But I managed to get the 5 in 1 done in 59 seconds. :P Boudica did it in 57! I am sure I could go faster but I was doing dumb shit like not counting my laps (and I thought I was done after 3... really?!?) and that sort of thing. I didn't feel like I was really in the groove for it, but oh well.
Oh, and one-leg slaloms. FUCKING CHRIST. Seriously, I did these okay last Sunday when I was casually practicing, and for some reason I think my nerves got the better of me. It seriously took me like TWENTY goes before Sarge suggested that I go into the slalom on the left side of the cone, so I go to the right between the first and second cones. And that totally makes sense because on my left leg I tend to drift to the right. Why the fuck didn't I think of that before?!?! Duh. But after he suggested it I got it in ONE go. Seriously I don't think I'm the right kind of smart for derby sometimes...
Then we had to do a coast and squat for one straight and a corner, and then a lap of squat and sticky skate. And some falls (baseball, 4-pointer, 180 degree one-knees).And OMG 60 second plank. Normally when we do it off skates I'm fine with it and can hold it for more than 60 seconds, but for some reason today on skates I felt like I was dying! But that worked out okay. As did the 40 sit ups and 40 pushups (which I managed to do properly, even on my munted rotator cuff).
But fuck yeah. I passed, and so did Boudica. It was awesome. I just felt really good about getting it, even if at some points I just squeaked through. I'm sure I could do the 5-in-1 better if I had another go, and also the one-leg slaloms.We aren't saying anything about it yet until Sarge officially announces it on Sunday, but yeah. Awesomesauce.
Of course, right after that, we were onto some orange star stuff! Hahaha like for serious. I really like the 5 jumps in a row, and we also practiced the 2m plow stop. God that shit is hard. But I can't wait to start doing it! And whips! And hits and all that stuff! Scrimmage time here we come!
