Pain....

So remember how excited I was after the my first "freshmeat" training session? Yes, I was truly encouraged. But then I got up the next morning. More like struggled to contort body into a sitting position on the edge of the bed. Standing at this point seemed like a way-in-the-future type of goal. I expected to be sore. Sure, I had just done lots of exercise after not having done exercise for awhile. Right. This was beyond sore. I don't think I've ever ached so completely  throughout my entire body. Pulling myself up from laying down in bed sent shooting pain all through my abs, sides of my torso and back. I also noticed that my arms weren't much good for helping as they were tender to the touch and smarted with every movement I made. So there I am sitting on the edge of the bed knowing it was only going to get worse. Taking a deep breath I pushed off the bed, an mind you ours is lower than your standard nest, and was somehow able to hold myself upright while my brain was overloaded with signals from every nocioreceptor (pain) in my body. In addition, I couldn't fully stand up because my legs were so stiff and I must've looked insane standing there, wincing with my knees bent to accommodate my significantly shorter leg muscles. After that I hobbled around the house, managed to dress myself and walked to school. So this is fun when you have all kinds of stairs to go up and down along the way. I don't remember everything I learned in Human Anatomy class but I have to say that whatever I pulled screamed just as much going up stairs as going down. In the past I've experienced one or the other. No. Not this time.

After arriving at school I gingerly lowered myself onto my desk chair and started to ignore the pain in my legs, only because they weren't currently moving under the desk. But every reach across the piles of papers had my back, arms and abs complaining. Busy with other tasks I put the pain out of my mind until, you guessed it, I had to go the bathroom. That meant extracting myself from the chair and walking, shudder, down the hall. With all those muscles you don't ever think about until their howling in agony I braced and pushed myself out of the chair. Embarrassingly, I had a genuine limp as my left leg tends to be less limber in general. This was exaggerated now and I could not compensate. So I limped my way down the hall. Then I faced a problem. Since my arms, chest and back were on fire I couldn't just put out my arms to push the door open. No, I had to, with T-Rex-like arms, use my body weight to push the door open. I've never had to do this before in my life. It made me marvel at how many coordinated muscle movements we make to achieve fluid actions. All without noticing. Until now.

The following morning, Tuesday, was worse. Much worse. I'm not sure why the second day after is a killer but it is. It took more time to get ready and make it up to school with all the wincing, whimpering and small gutteral cries you might imagine. Especially when I had to push doors open. Every time I needed to visit the restroom I sighed and cringed because, you know, I knew what was coming and the sighing hurt too.

On Wednesday I was getting really worried because I was still hobbling around. That night I had my weekly Rollerfit course and wasn't sure what to expect with my decrepit feeling body. But I attended and made it through the class. At this point I think the extra moving around was helping stretch my muscles back to their regular length.

So I'm not sure what to expect, probably more of the same, with the next training sessions. I'm wondering if there is some method to their madness in scheduling them every other week. Maybe so we can have enough time to recover before the next session. :) Despite all the pain I'm planning to go back but at this point I cannot imagine moving beyond this beginner/pain stage. It'll be a great day when I just feel tired the day after. :)

Truth.....

So it's time to come clean. As you know Tim and I have been following the Richter City Rollerderby league since arriving in Wellington. We went to and thoroughly enjoyed the games last year. This year we decided to buy season tickets. More than once while watching the games I had thought, "I wish I had the balls to try this". And more than once Tim had turned to me and said, "Why don't you try it?". Don't get too worried - I haven't officially joined. Yet. :)

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.