We attended a game before we went to Europe and by the end of the bout I was pumped up and sought out some of the players to get some more information about joining the league. I knew that interest and enthusiasm is great but I had a serious problem. With the exception of a few children's birthday parties, over twenty years ago, I have not rollerskated. I mentioned this to one of the girls and she surprised me by saying, "Oh, don't worry about that, we teach you how to skate". I was stunned. I figured you needed to know how to skate to be taken on by the league. Since then I've learned that they are gearing up to do an induction of "freshmeat" at the end of this year. Then those who are taken on start training with the league, must go on to pass a skills course and then, and only then are they placed on a Richter City team. So when it comes to this part of rollerderby, the movie, Whip It, has it all wrong. :) A tremendous amount of work goes into training before they will take you.
With that said, since we don't have our own skates or protective gear, we've started going out to a recreation center in one of the suburbs where you can rent skates/gear. They have open skate sessions where we spend our time practicing striding, turning and stopping, but mostly just trying to dodge the multitudes of little kids flying by on scooters. :)
The first time we decided to do this we both fell. Bad. I mean that we fell in such a way that you're on the ground before you even know what has happened, with your head spinning, your tailbone smarting and your pride a little bruised. :) After that neither of us could sit down without whimpering or visibly wincing for several days. Even so we decided to go back for more.
You have to understand that Tim has spent significantly more time than me on skates, albeit they were hockey skates or rollerblades, but his skills most definitely transferred to "quads". Like I said earlier my experience has been decidedly less extensive so I consider myself to be starting from the beginning.
From some contact with Richter City we learned that there is a small, up and coming, men's rollerderby league and Tim has started practicing with them. I've attended a couple of the practices as they are at the same place where we practice. Let me just say these guys are amazing skaters and the sessions are intense. But I'm proud to say that Timmy can keep up with them and give them a run for their money. :)
So might be wondering about me. How am I going to get up to speed? We've continued to spend time practicing on the weekends and I've joined a weekly Rollerfit course that covers the basics of skating (no derby). So far I've attended two classes and am loving it. I didn't know what to expect but I was shocked to find out that some of the people in the class had never ever ever skated before in their lives. While I have a million miles to go and countless skills to learn it's nice to know that I'm not really starting from square one. Maybe square four. :)
In addition, last weekend I attended my first "freshmeat" training session. The idea is that Richter City wants to get interested chicas training and improving so they're on their way when they do the induction at the end of the year. Going into that practice I was terrified because like I already said, my skating needs so much work. But they insisted that they take skaters at any level and work with them at these training sessions. So I psyched myself up, took some deep breaths and got on the bus. With butterflies in my stomach I walked to the rec center from the bus stop, rented my skates and paid my $10 to attend the class. As I put on my skates, knee/elbow/wrist pads, and helmet I was wondering, "Is this a mistake? Am I crazy for doing this? I can barely skate!". On a brighter note, even though I was filled with self-doubt everyone was incredibly nice and I felt welcomed straight away.
Then we were off. They marked off a "track" on the floor and we started with some, not too difficult, warm ups. Round and round we went practicing "derby position", that is knees deeply bent but you keep your torso upright so you can see what's coming. At this point I was starting to relax a tiny bit because our random practicing had given me enough skill to do these first few exercises without too many problems.
We moved on to stretching. Let me just say this is interesting when you have heavy skates on your feet but we got through and I made a point to stretch really well to ensure that I wouldn't be sore the following day. Remember that for later, I'll come back to it. We followed this with core strength exercises: sit ups, push ups, and planks. Embarrassingly difficult.
The remainder of the class we spent time practicing the skills necessary to achieve "crossovers". That is when your skating around the end of the track you step one skate over the other to make the turn and pick up speed. I've been working up to these on my own but haven't been able to do them properly just yet. Needless to say I was pleased to get feedback and additional drills to practice because I really want to be able to do crossovers!!!
Lastly, we spent some time practicing falls. I struggled with all of them. One of them requires you to lower yourself down to one knee to catch yourself and then pop back up. It was while we were doing these that I decided that my body must not have a "core" because I wasn't really able to brace myself and pop up after I went down to one knee. This was followed by "baseball slides" where you skate along and basically bend one leg and tuck it under you so you can lower yourself to the ground and slide on your butt. This should be followed by you popping up to your feet without issue. Right. There were issues. It was hard. So much harder than you might think. :)
After everything we did some skating to warm down and another round of stretching. Then as people were drifting out the door the coaches insisted that I ride with them when they found out I didn't have a car. :) So arriving home, sweaty and completely disheveled I excitedly reiterated everything that had happened to Timmy. He and I were both relieved that it had been such a positive experience. I can't tell you how pleased I was that I could do some of the skills and really look forward to learning more.
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