week 11!

man oh man, i cant believe i have been doing this for almost three months now...time sure is flying! ive got a derby name all picked out (but it's not going to be revealed publicly until it gets accepted!) and i cant wait to order my super fancy ARRG league jacket! plus i'll have voting rights...pretty important, i'd say!

monday was a really hard practice. we spent almost the entire three hours running jams, and i was totally EXHAUSTED by the end of it because our numbers were kinda low. i was in for three jams in a row at one point...holy moly that was SO FREAKING TIRING! i felt like i was going to throw up!! there was one jam at the end of practice where i was lead jammer and i was just totally exhausted and i wanted to call the jam off, but i just kept going and managed to score 5 points before the jam was called off after time ran out. i just kept getting knocked down, got back up, knocked down, got back up. it was quite a fight for me to keep going, but i did! i felt good about that.

thursday practice was a travel team practice, and it was led by magnum PIMP and high pains drifter, two very excellent gatekeepers players and also excellent coaches/refs! there was a bit of fitness at the beginning which was nice and challenging, and then we spent the rest of practice doing drills. they were a lot of fun and i spent most of the drills in the jammer line. downtown dallis asked if i was wanting to be a jammer and i told her i figured i would just give it a shot! for some reason i do better as a jammer than a blocker; at least right now i do. guess i am better at taking/avoiding hits than actually giving hits! i hope to work on that though; i'd like to be as well-rounded as possible. one funny part of practice is that if you cut the track or backblocked anybody you had to use a shakeweight for 15 seconds as "punishment". ive never actually used a shakeweight before, but i did that night! it really wouldn't be so bad if it weren't for that totally embarrassing noise it makes when you use it :-P

i also got new kneepads! this might not seem like a big deal to most people but my current kneepads were almost a year old already and i definitely needed some new ones. the ones i got are PROFESSIONAL grade, mmk? they're a lot thicker than the ones i have now, and it was a bit of an adjustment skating with them (crossovers were weird the first few times, kept knocking my legs into them) but after an hour i didn't even notice them anymore. having good knee protection is essential because that's where a lot of injuries can occur in derby. its worth it to spend a little more and have the best pads available rather than spending thousands on knee surgery!

last but not least, the draft is on tuesday! yikes!! very nervous as i have submitted myself for it. i really have no clue as to whether or not ill actually get drafted, but i figured it was worth a shot. guess you'll all find out in my next posting about my experience with the draft and the outcome of it as well. cross your fingers!