Less Tired Now

Let's see if I can manage to recount last night's practice now.

So I hadn't been to practice in a while, like a week and a half, so I knew last night was gonna be tough. Also the group of newbies we've got has advanced some, so our practices are getting harder.

The first thing Foxy does is count us off. 1s and 2s. I knew this would be bad. Sho nuff, Foxy tells the 2s to get up and we're doing the 25 in 5. I counted for Hellin. Then the 1s got up. Foxy told us she'd rather we crossover the whole way and get over 5 minutes than come in under 5 and not have the form. I have trouble on the straightaways, skating the optimum path, coming back in for the turn. I start striding there rather than crossing over. I worked really hard to crossover the whole time. I thought I was doing well.

My time was 5:01. I'm not ashamed, it's fine with me. That is the product of not having skated in a week and a half. Foxy said that for those of us planning to assess next go-round, this was a good benchmark. I've already come in under 5 minutes, so I know I can again.

We did a stamina and endurance drill, and it was long and grueling and not that interesting. It was beneficial to build up the fundamentals. Yay.

We worked on arm whips with partners. Foxy somehow paired me with Caitlin. I swear, I'm gonna ask to be called by my last name if this doesn't stop. Caitlin's derby name is Cal-Q-H8r, which does not roll off the tongue. Sometimes they call her Cal-Q, but overwhelmingly no. Anyway, I worked on whips. My inside arm whips still need some improvement, but they're gettin there.

Then we did pushes and whips. And I'm pretty good pushes, so this was not a problem.

So then Foxy went offskates and grabbed the blocking dummy and we did some hitting. Foxy said that during assessments, she noticed that a lot of people were not comfortable with hitting. So she set up this obstacle course. We lined up, hit the dummy, cut to the inside of the track, did some lateral movement, and then toe-stop walked. HOWEVER I had a lot of trouble with the lateral movement, I think the cones were just too close together. My lateral movement is improving. I need to work on making my feet move in the proper manner.

So the hitting. We were doing hip checks. I managed to keep my elbow out of the hit, which is good! However I went down a bunch. But I got right back up. Foxy started out on the outside of the track, then switched to the inside. The inside screwed me up. The second (I think?) time through, I went down on my general hip/butt/thigh area and it was one of those that resonated in my back. I took a second to stretch out my butt, and it still hurt, but I got back in line and went through again. And I fell down again.

Luckily, it was stretching/cool down time after that. I came home and iced my butt. Still hurts, but it's better. Might have to take an ice pack with me to work, just in case.

I hurt like a moose this morning. But I got through the blog.

Also, I'm likely to be inactive for this month, so I'll try to continue to post, but I don't know how often it'll happen. I think I found a pair of roller skates that might fit Josh, so maybe he'll consent to going skating with me. He's already said he'd go to a rink with me, but maybe he'd skate outdoors with me too. (Hmmm....)