summary of week two

this week, for whatever reason, wasnt as intense as last week. i made it past thursday with minimal soreness! hooray! but also boooo, cause it means i probably wasnt working as hard as i shouldve been....

my new wheels: radar tuners!

monday was unfortunately a shorter practice, because our league holds a scrimmage once a month for the recreational league, which always falls on a monday. so we started the night on our skates and quickly ran through our essentials (stops and falls), and then worked a bit on turnaround toe stops, which was especially nice, since it was a review after working on it a LOT at thursday practice. a mere two months ago i thought i'd never be able to do them, but im learning quickly, and its nice. unfortunately for whatever reason i felt sluggish that night and probably didnt skate to my full potential; i told a couple of people my feet felt like molasses. to help combat this i also ordered some slicker wheels from romo, since my skating skills are better now and i dont need as much grip. the floor at the skatium has also been redone and is not quite as slick as it was before, making my current wheels feel kinda slow and "heavy". who knew wheels could make such a big difference?

after the short practice was the rec bout. id been to several as a pre-newbie but this time i actually got involved, which i was REALLY excited about! i was a penalty timer, which means i sit in the penalty box and time skaters as they enter the box; they have to sit there for one minute. i tell them when ten seconds are remaining that they may stand, and when they are done and may re-enter play. it was kinda cool seeing the other side of the sport a little bit and eventually when my body cant handle the constant intense hits that are required of you in derby, i would love to be a skating ref!

skating backwards...where are her pads??

thursday's practice was HARDDDD. romo led it and she loves to skate backwards, so guess what we did? we skated backwards almost the entire time. my feet, especially the arches, were just KILLING me. i know i feel nervous skating backwards since i cant really see where i am going even when i look over my shoulder.  therefore, i dont feel as confident, causing me to use my feet to grip the bottom of my skates, causing a lot of cramps and pain. im working to try and unlearn that and relax my feet, and i can tell it is going to be one of my biggest challenges. i was able to pick up my speed a bit though, and i feel a bit more confident now.  the last part of practice was some positional blocking and using "lanes" on the track to create a wall that the jammer cant pass. of course all of us yellow girls couldnt do any REAL blocking, but it was nice to learn and go through all the motions and have a bit of strategy in our practice.  i got to feel a teensy bit of what contact was like when one of the girls kinda forgot herself and started shoving me around a bit. romo yelled at her that i was in yellow and she stopped, but hey, i am okay with contact! i can hardly wait to start hitting people!!

i skipped thursday practice, but it was a scrimmage and i felt i could use the rest. i did go to a local skating rink on wednesday though and skated around with a friend. any practice is good practice, right?