Best. Derbyweekend. Ever!

As most of you know, Luleå Roller Derby went to Gothenburg last weekend for a bootcamp with Swede Hurt and Mad Maloony and a scrimmage. Now I have to tell you that just before the weekend I had a total mental meltdown (all kinds of stress, unusually dark winter and monster PMS will do that). So much so that I almost didn't go to Gothenburg thinking I wouldn't be able to cope with not sleeping at home and taking criticism from Swede. In the end the lovely Badass talked me into going but I promised her a fight if the big bad (unknown to me then) Swede would ever start to "tjafsa" at me personally...

Lo and behold! I'm the first one of the weekend that physically gets pulled off the track into the infield to be (what felt like) yelled at by the lovely amazon for something that I swear I normally never do, haha! I looked over the amazon's shoulder at Badass, started smiling, nodding and counting to ten and in the end I even managed to say "thank you" and mean it. :)

After the first training of two hours, we had a short break so that the officials could get everything in order and we could get organized as a team. Loony was going to be our bench coach which felt awesome. This was going to be my third game and at the first one you hardly register what happens at all, the second one I had to coach and play at the same time and now for the first time I got to focus on playing derby. This was going to be good. We decided to treat the game as it was, a training/friendship game and everybody who ever wanted to try jamming was encouraged to do so. It turned out that that was almost everybody and at the same time our players that normally play as jammers also really wanted a go at blocking, so this was going to be fun. Everybody got to rotate and play as much as they wanted!

Loony did an awesome job at deciding who would be best at which role in which jam and in the second half we really started to gain some points. We almost beat Gbg but it ended at a 108-90. Next time we play them we'll play with serious preparation and line ups and see what happens. ;)

Why jamming works when you're 1.87 m tall and weigh 99 kg.

The next day we had another four hours of training coming at us. The tactics and skills we trained were very fitting for where we are in our derby right now, so it was incredibly valuable! The amount of times Swede told me to bend my knees, I don't know, I lost count. But it was good that she did. I've had six months of getting trained in the beginning, but from then on I became the trainer which means that I tell others but nobody ever tells me to bend my knees more.

Skating my lungs out.

The weekend had a reffing workshop going as well, which meant that for the very first time we got to play with a full set of refs. That was a nice feeling. We know we (Viking women from the North) play a rough game with hard hits and even though we try to minimize the back blocking and elbows, I know those are a problem for us. So having a full team of refs meant that we got to test out how far over the line of "too many fouls" we really were. I have to say I was positively surprised at the result. Of course these weren't the most experienced refs, but as they get better, so will we.

Our refs on their workshop with Fluke Skywalker.

Both Loony and Swede have given me a lot this past weekend and on the train ride home I heard similar sounds from teammates. Thank you ladies and thank you Gothenburg for organizing this!

So driven and inspired

From the very first training that I held with Luleå Roller Derby I loved doing it, but lately it's just becoming more and more fun! There's a hardcore bunch that really let themselves get trained and have this ability to turn a few spoken words into a practical exercise and then get really good at it as well. And then there is the bunch that works in shifts or have other reasons to not always make it to the trainings who then are super enthusiastic once they finally can be there, which brings so much joy to the trainings. Everybody seems so inspired right now and everybody is getting so skilled. I'm having a blast!

Just had to share my after-training-high with you. :)

Full frontal blocking

Wow! What skills we're seeing during the still ongoing Roller Derby World Cup in Toronto. As a beginning team (yes, we rock! But we are very much beginners) it's impossible to look at a team like Australia and say: "in two months time I want us to skate like they do." But what I CAN try to do as a trainer is to pick out two aspects of a high ranking team's gameplay and try and improve on those two aspects. The two I picked were endurance and being able to play derby facing backwards.

Derby endurance is a tough kind of endurance. You are basically skating two periods of 30 minutes filled with long intervals at 100%. In the world of training, an interval at 95% is about 10-15 seconds. Any longer and you have to come down in intensity. A jam can take anything up to 2 minutes. Yikes! Yeah. But since it can also be as short 15 seconds (doesn't happen often, but it happens), as soon as that double jammer signal comes you have to explode into a 100% sprint AND worry about getting passed 8 players of which 4 are trying as hard as they can not to let you pass. If you're unlucky enough that neither jammer is getting lead jammer (= the ability to call of the jam) you're gonna be skating at a neck breaking pace for 2 minutes. There's much more to jammer endurance, but I wont bore you with that right now.

Soo... skating backwards and playing derby. That still covers a wide range of skills of which I picked two that I feel are important. This was one:

Turning around and supporting your wall from the front both with your body and with your eyes. A while back we started actively training on letting the jammer push forward on a strong wall so that the wall gets out of play and has to let her pass. Of course the wall has to try and break, but breaking is much easier when going backwards. In comes the backwards rolling wall support. The wall support is now the one with the most perfect view over all the pack action and should therefore communicate everything she sees.

Manic Medic as wall support, Hellsparx and Evil Fairy as wall and Miss Maniac as jammer (here the jammer has almost broken through the wall already but the wall support manages to hold her back a bit longer).

Roller Derby World Cup

One day this will be available on tv but this weekend's first ever Roller Derby world cup will have to be watched online. This is where it's streamed and the second day of bouts is about to start. I'll soon be hopping on the bus to get to Pappa Smurf and watch Sweden - Canada and Sweden - France in the sweet company of some of our girls and some of our refs.

Hup Sweden, hup! .. no wait.
Sweden, Sweden, Sweden.. oj, oj, .. oh hang on...
Allez les bleus, allez les bleus, allez-les-bleus.. no.. not that one either..

RIGHT!

Heja Sverige! Heja Sverige! (say: heya sweariye!)

Pink Ribbon event

I'd like to post at least one picture with everything I write, so I keep telling myself to take pics at trainings and then I get so into the training (and being with the girls) that I completely forget about taking pics for the blogg. Sorry! 

However, during that period of a few months when I didn't write at all, we had another big event which I completely forgot to tell you about. THE local (but nationally high ranking) ladies Basket Ball team were playing their annual pink ribbon game and booked us as halftime entertainment! This meant that we would get to play derby in front of an audience of 1500 people, yikes! The tough part was that those people weren't there for us, and we only got to play for five minutes. About 50% of the girls that got onto the presentation team were rookies that had never played any derby in front of an audience at all so nerves were high strung to say the least. 

Waiting for our turn...

The biggest fear for most girls that are going to roll in front of an audience for the first time (and often times after that as well) is that she will fall flat on her face for no reason at all and look extremely clumsy while doing it. What they don't know is that that will most probably happen and not just once, but that the clumsiness doesn't matter because we look cool and are having fun anyways! Every single person sitting in that audience wishes they would have your courage to make a fool of themselves doing what they love doing and seemingly not giving a fuck about what others think. And that's exactly why you WONT look like a fool when you think you might. Still making sense?

Have fun, skate hard! (and make me read this post next time I get on the track in front of an audience again)

Nallederby

There is no ball in derby... But there's a teddy bear! Oh yes, Nallederby (= Teddyderby) is the newest thing here at Luleå Roller Derby. We've been playing it in secret for a little while, but now a video of it actually leaked. The aim of the game? Of the 5 minutes played, have your team be in Nallepossession the longest. No need to form a pack, legal hitting- and target zones do of course have to be observed, as do direction of play rules and throwing is allowed. Your team gains Nallepossession when: picking up the fallen Nalle with only your wheels in contact with the floor (no knees or hands on the floor), you make the opposing Nalleholder fall by means of a legal block, you make the opposing Nalleholder skate out of bounds by means of legal blocking.

Simple and loads of fun!

Victory is sweet!

A bit late, but it took me a while to get down from that cloud of sweet, sweet victory. But now I'm here so now I can tell you how awesome it was.

We went on a combined training camp/game weekend to Umeå. That's an often used form of meeting others within roller derby. You have a few training sessions together and then you close of the weekend with a game. These games are then usually called scrimmages which are friendly games. The more official games, or bouts, usually do not coincide with a joint training camp.

This was a very important scrimmage for our club, because it was the first time we were playing a game with a full team of our own players, no borrowed players. To me personally it was a very important game because it was the first one since I had become trainer of the team.

Jammer Lucie SlayHer jamming her way through the pack

We played three periods of 20 minutes. We started strong with the intent to shock shplat them from the start which seemed to have the desired effect. We immediately took the lead and managed to hold it through out the first two periods. During the last break in preparation of the final period we decided to change our tactics expecting the other team to have caught on to how we were playing and changed from a more mixed style to a purely defensive tactic to keep the lead we had and secure the win.

f.l.t.r. back row: Major Roadkill, Manic Medic, Miss Maniac, Wicked Rosie, Tiny Touretts, Petra Pak, Violent Vixen, Badass Babuska. f.l.t.r. front row: Cherry Lawless, Lucie SlayHer, Concrete Kitten, Gaby Granade, Scary Mary

We won a fantastic trophy made by the Umeå girls which will hopefully find a nice display spot until Umeå manages to win it back. The trophy goes together with the title "Queens of Norrland."

Queens of Norrland

That's us!!

One happy camper!

Wiii. Today was such a good day! Well, todays training was such a good training. It started of with Papa Smurf giving me this awesome folder. I always show up for trainings either with a big heavy folder (which holds all sort of derby related shit) or with loose pieces of paper on which I have scribbled down a general outline for that particular training. Those then end up under my bra strap so that I can reference it on the go. Result: soggy bits of paper that smell delicious (not!) with runny letters on them. But now I have the all in one coaching tool of derby heaven!

Oh yes, that is actually a magnetic mini whiteboard on the inside of the front cover with tiny magnetic jammers, blockers and pivots. I love it!! Thank you, Papa Smurf.

And then from there on the training just became even more fun. I had set up some mattresses against the wall so we could check the shit out of the wall in stead of each other (playing a scrimmage next weekend). That was so much fun! At first I was planning to ask one of our new refs to hold up the mattresses while we would practice our fullbody- and hip checks on them, but I think, after seeing the amount of force we were able to put out he was happy that I decided on the help of the wall in stead. I was planning to take pics so I could show you some of the girls flying into the mattresses and just slaughtering them, but I was having so much fun, that I forgot. I'll try and remember next time we do the same exercise.

After that we did 45 mins of jams with one 3 min break and only 6 on each team... yeah.. tiring, but so delicious! And wow... we were seeing some really good derby out there! Even getting compliments from players that had been away for a while and from some of our refs that really noticed we were getting better. Such a good feeling!

Just what I needed one week before Umeå. Thank you everybody! :)

Finally we're safe!

So far, we've had ice spray and snow to take care of our bruises and sprains, but now the team finally owns their very own First Aid kit! And it's huge! We need to fill it up a bit more, but it contains the essentials for now: icepacks, more ice spray, bandages, bandaids, disinfectant, scissors, more sports tape, etc. I am so happy with this!

Great derby!

Yes yes.. spending my friday evening watching a live stream of the USA flat track championships. You can get a free low quality stream here. And with the help of some clicks you can even buy the high quality version. It's the high quality stream that is showing on our TV right now. This are bouts between the top teams of the world which makes the derby quite complicated some times. New strategies, fast juking, even the refs seem to have a higher penalty threshold. Very exciting to watch!

The first bout was won by Minnesota in the blue and army uniforms

Preperation is everything

The 19th of Nov we're playing a scrimmage (a friendly game) against Umeå Radical Rollers and 50% of our team is going to be rookies that are taking their minimum skills test this week and next week.

Last weekend (during a not too sober team bonding night) we chose the team captain (Roadkill) and her assistant (Scary Mary) and I just know they will be awesome! So now the focus lies on becoming a team. Not only in the pub or smiling at each other on the track. But knowing each others skating style so you can predict your team mates moves and adjust your own so that we as a team can knock that opposing jammer utterly senseless. Very zen.

Sprained ankles, hip replacements and strokes!

A LOT has happened since I last had the time to write here. First of all... notice the name change of the blogg? I didn't really like the demonic part so much because that doesn't really fit me, but after trying 1001 options because every single name is taken (yes, no two roller girls in the world have the same name), you kinda lose sight and then I chose wrong. But one day, on my way home from practice it hit me. Manic Medic. Fitting in SO many ways! So I'm very happy with it.

Number two that happened: I did a long internship which I just finished last friday. First a period at the hospital where I felt very much like I was playing a part on Grey's Anatomy and then a period at a stroke rehabilitation center, where I felt very much like an incompetent cow. In the end I got very good evaluations on both though, so all was good.

Does the jacket make you feel safer?

Thing three that happened: over summer I became the vice president of our wonderful league: Lueå Roller Derby! I really don't want to let our fast growing league down, so I'm doing the very best I can without drowning. Everybody who has ever been on the board of a roller derby league, knows how easy it is to drown. So far though, it's just loads of rewarding fun!

Thing number four that happened: over summer I also became the trainer for our league. This is supposed to be a temporary thing, because we would of course like to have a dedicated trainer that doesn't play her-/himself, but it will probably keep going for quite a while. I love training our league! We have the best bunch of girls that are all strong individuals. And it's great experience for me: I only have a little more than a year left on my degree to be a physiotherapist, so not only do I get to practice my knowledge of training physiology and theories on training motivation, I even get the occasional patient, haha! Cherry Lawless was one of two girls with a sprained ankle.

©Joakim Norrgård

Now we are preparing for an away scrimmage against Umeå. I'll write more about that next time! :)

Still wishing you derby kisses,
Manic Medic

Upping the ante

Only a few more weeks to go before the bout against Stockholm and practices are showing that it's serious business now. Finally training all those barrelroll- and superman falls is paying off because now they are actually needed in reality. The atmosphere is where it should be, eyes say: "you goin' DOWN!" while butts are getting pinched. Only women can have such double intentions and mean it all!

Boxes, bridges, waterfalls, goats, taking knees, killer walls, recycling. Just a few of the plays that are passing by at the practices. Vi skate our asses into buns of steel and will crush Stockholm with them!

After which we'll grab a beer and a couple of shots with the Stockholm girls. ;)

Derby kisses,
Dutchess.

Summer!

Yes! Summer finally made it to the far North. We've had a couple of nice days here and there, but now we've had a full week of sunburns everywhere. Delicious! This also means we're rolling a lot outside. That really has two sides to it and I can't decide which side wins. Positive side: Rolling outside is fun (!), it trains the small balance muscles in your legs and feet, it makes you adaptable to obstacles, with a bit of luck we make ourselves noticed. Negative side: Rolling outside means we're not rolling inside preparing for our upcoming game (5th of august BTW, hush), we're not doing pack training, not tackling, not learning plays. It's a tough call. Both are needed, so we do both. Today was just fantastic! Look at this!

MADicken in the front and Ra-punch-al (undecided) following closely

In the photo we're close to "home". We rolled a really nice route down and round Hertsön which had new asphalts and nice downhills (of course you always have to go up the hill that you came down).

Perfect summer lined up!

Just one more week of studying my ass off and then my summer holidays start. Yay!

June and July I will be off and therefor have loads of time to skate, promote us and train for an upcoming bout (not sure what I'm allowed to say about that one at this stage, so I'm not saying anything, hush hush). After that bout I'm going to tropical Holland for the first time since three years, woohoo! Sun sun sun! Of course I am taking my gear with me to skate outdoors, but also to skate some Derby. Yeah! I've been in contact with Furr Rocious, of the Amsterdam Derby Dames and it turns out I'm welcome to roll with them on their training. I am SO looking forward to that. I love our girls here in the far North, but it's gonna be so awesome to meet others and play with them! But wait.. it gets better.. ADD are playing their first official bout while I'm in Holland so I get to take my friends and family to a bout to show them what it's all about.

When I come back I have my internships waiting for me. Five weeks at the hospital and five weeks at a neuro rehab centre. I'm even looking forward to that!

Now I just have to clear these exams. If I don't, I'm screwed since the retakes are when I'm in Holland and I need to clear these before I'm allowed to go out to my internships.

Like a naked butt on a soapy waterslide

... but with much more directional control. That's what these slim Stingers are like to me. I say to me, because how you apreciate wheels is very personal. It has to do with your fysique, your skate build and then your personal preferences.

I absolutely love them and I have to get me a set. I tried them out in the skatehall which means slippery, cement floor but as you can see they are moderately hard/soft (88A on a scale that seeems to run from about 74A = super soft to 98A = super hard). The hardness and slimness made them roll fast but the softness gave me enough grip to not slide in the fast curves at all. The wheels I currently have are also 88As, but they are wider and cheaper. The wideness makes them clunky in turns and makes them get stuck in other blockers wheels, the cheapness makes them slip in fast curves. Well, I think the slipping really also has to do with the wideness, because it means that I tilt them to the sides in my cross-overs sooner then the slim wheels, which means I reduce the grip surface.

So.. I don't own a set, but I got to try them anyways? One of our refs bought a set and is still deciding if he likes them. I have been considering them for a while now, but they are a bit expensive, so I hadn't dared ordering them yet. As soon as he posted that he had gotten them I rudely ordered some alone time with the cuties.

Copyright 2011 Joakim Norrgard

 Roll Out Boy, thank you so much for helping me find my love!

Derby kisses,

Dutchess

Derby weekend

The sun was shining, the people interested, the DJ playing and we were rolling... on the main street here in Luleå. We were only 5 or 6 in skates and the street wasn't wide enough to make a real track, so we played some jam simulations (two blockers on each team and only one jammer) on our tiny track wich consisted of tiles, cobble stones and sewage lids.

Me in black trying to pass Badass Babuska in the green helmet

That was yesterday and then today we followed it up by a nice training with the best girls ever. This was one of the few times that I really didn't feel like going to practice, but I'm glad I did anyway. It made me feel so much better!

Derby kisses,
Dutchess

Skatemechanic

 Sooo.. tonight we get to skate at the best floor ever. I am so looking forward to it! A gorgeous wooden polished sports floor. In honor of tonight I started pulling apart my skates and cleaning every single part last night. I even opened up the bearings which I thought I ruined by skating through filthy puddles outdoors, cleaned them in acetone, greased them with 5-56 (thank you Madeleine) and closed them back up.

Now they roll much better than they did before, but when spinning inbetween my fingers I do feel some internal damages. At least I think I do. So I'm gonna keep those for outdoors and will try a new set from the local sports shop in my indoors tonight. I still want to order some harder and narrower indoor wheels than I have now and then I'll get a proper set of bearings for those.

That's all for now!

Derby kisses,
Dutchess

Easter rolling

On sundays we normally have a training at the skatehall and during those hours Slaughters Daughters are the hosts for tjejåkning. That means that any girl that wants to use the skatehall is welcome in. Today we wouldn't be enough derby girls to actually do a real training but someone still had to go and be host for tjejåkning, so Roadkill and I showed up. The weather was too awesome to roll on the dusty indoor cement floor, so we decided to use the parking lot in stead. Normally it's filled with cars from the boule players next door, but unlike us they didn't have any easter activity, so the carpark was ours!

 

 

 

 

 

 

Roadkill

Me

 

I hope you are all having a sun filled easter weekend!

Derby kisses,
Dutchess

Some long awaited footage

So.... be nice!

First a tiny snippet of my very first training with Slaughters Daughters. Skates borrowd from Badass Babuska, pads from the "pads pool" and lovely white helmet with flowers from my darling daughter. You'll see some general skating, low sticky skating, a hip-whip snake and then some balancing.

In this next video you see us trying out a new play called waterfall. I'm jamming (the only jammer) for the team dressed in black tops against the team dressed in light/coloured tops (not easy to see the difference in the vid). I have three of my own blockers skating as the pack and then four of the oposing blockers skating behind the pack one at a time spread out. This way they are spreading out the pack significantly to create a longer stretch of the track in which they are allowed to engage me (they are only alowed to touch me or be in my way as long as they are part of the pack). When you are more than three meters away from the pack, you are considered to be out of play, but stay at the max alowed distance and you have enlarged the pack by max three meters. Then the next girl has to stay within three meters of you and then you've enlarged the pack by max 6 meters, etc etc.

We are playing soft and not at full speed to get a feel for the play. Lady Lovely Blocks, who was coaching, added the rule of doing ten push-ups when fouling or getting out of bounds. 

To any potential sponsors (or sugar daddies) out there ;). As you can see we are in desperate need of coloured vests (you know, those netted thingies you pull over to create teams) and a bigger (or emptier) practice venue with a hard floor.

Derby kisses,
Dutchess.

PS be nice and I'll try to get more film/photos up every now and then. Be nasty and I'll kick your ask!

Doing the Bergnäset

Today's training was great! We went through a bunch of new plays which we then gave new names so that an opposing team wont recognise what we're doing "oh! They're doing the waterfall, let's counter that by taking a hostage."

Towards the end of the training we did some limbo tackling which was fun and very usefull. Two girls skate down the track alongside a rope that's held up in the middle just over waste hight. Then the outside girl ducks underneath the rope and while she's in a low position she tackles the inside girl. We have such a huge range of tackle levels in our team.

I noticed that I don't update as much any more lately. I think that is mostly due to the fact that the period of initial progression is over. I do no longer just get better by attending and just spending time in skates. Progress has to be earned now and will be a lot slower than it was at first. Then it becomes less interesting to write something after every single training.

I got filmed this time BTW and I'll put some footage up as soon as I get it.

Derby kisses,
Dutchess

Yes!

It's since yesterday that Roller Derby officially is one step closer to being a big sport here in Sweden! It got taken in in Svenska Skridskoförbundet's list that already existed of sprint kating, distance skating, long distance skating (long trips on natural ice) and inline. I am not sure how everything is organised here in Sweden when it comes to the different sportassociations, how important they are or how much financial support they will cough up, but this feels really good. This organisation is affiliated with several international (roller) skating associations and (along others) with the big national sports association.

They sport a very pretty explanation of the sport on their website.

In other news: I recieved my outdoor wheels and tried them out... indoors. They are more narrow than the ones I had, which is heaven! But also much softer so that they wont get stuck on every little piece of debris on the bike paths, which was not so nice on the indoor cement floor. At least I got them in time for our outdoor event which will take place on May 7th in the middle of town (Storgatan) at 12.00 hrs. Hope to see you there!

Derby kisses,
Dutchess.

Hip tackling

Last monday was a VERY fruitfull training!

Got more balance and skill on my skates by training more on 180 turns, skating backwards, doing backwards cross-overs and doing different snakes. In the end we did some pack training buy doing some jams with only using our hips and asses for tackling and blocking. The pack training was so giving! For the first time I had the feeling that I actually understood what was happening around me and could respond very effectively several times AND when it was my turn to jam I did not feel any of the fears I felt before.

Unfortunately the Valborg bout has been canceled, but another event is soon coming up!

Derby kisses,
Dutchess

Blocks

Will (some of) the blocks in my head be broken today? I really hope so, but just thinking about it already makes me feel scared. This is crap!

Feels like the only way past these blocks is to get into a major crash/fall and not getting injured, but it's the not getting injured part that gets a bit uncertain when you talk major crashes. Major crashes is not something you set yourself up for on purpose.

Stop rationalising about it!! Just stay low and go go go!!

Dutchess

Ass!

The last two weeks or maybe even longer I have been unwantingly scared shitless of being waltzed of the track or even waltzing others for that matter. Medium contact is fine, but I have this stupid unconcious block in my head that keeps me from trying anything more than medium. It's frustrating as hell!

Last night as an illustration I was jamming in a pack training against Badass Babuska and I just knew (or did I just assume?) she had it in for me, so instead of racing her to the first corner I decided to safely hang out behind her (great ass btw). WTF!? Why!? I'm bigger than her and I'm as fast as her, yeah fine, she has better technique, but will I ever learn if I just keep pacing behind her and never try? NO!

Disappointed Dutches.

Unfitness

With my knowledge of what fitness is, how to train it up, how not to train it and how to maintain it, I really have no excuse to be as unfit as I am. At the start of winter I was pretty fit. Not over doing it or anything but I was able to run about 7k straight while weighing about a 100 kg (yes weight matters, if you weigh 70 kg, try and run with a 30 kg backpack). Last summer I could barely run for one minute so I was pretty happy with those results. Then the snow came and I moved indoors, which went fine for a while but right around christmas (strange how that holiday always tends to effect fitness *grin*) I gave up. I hate running at a gym! I hate the feeling of people watching me in there. All those super fit people.

So, now the snow is melting and soon the ashfalts will lay bare, ready for me to run on them. I'm dreading the first week as I'm sure the results will be highly dissapointing. But I really have to. I want my skating to feel as effortless as it apearantly looks to some. In stead of it leaving me writhing on the ground hoping to die soon.

I should also order some outdoor wheels now, so I can alternate running with skating days (different pulse) once the city has cleaned up all the gravel after winter.

Do you have any spring work out plans?

Derby kisses,
Dutchess

Oldies

Yesterday's training was fantastic! I was the only newby within almost a full team of oldies and wow, did that put me back in my place! I felt so lost when acting as blocker in the pack training. They are fast,  agile and have of course a huge insight in the game compared to my next to not existing knowledge of how to turn theory into practice. I got to jam one jam as well, but I couldn't even finish it. I was exhausted half way through and had to call it. Jamming through a pack made up of 50% newbies like me feels smooth most of the time, but now I got stopped in my tracks over and over again. I wasn't counting, but it felt like I needed three laps to get through the pack the second time and then I only got through because Lady Lovely Blocks was so nice to let me get out of the pack at the front. Or was she supposed to, was she on my team?

Plusses? 

• I got to call a jam by putting my hands on my hips. Oh yeah! (hihi)
• Got my feet safely planted on the ground again, I am not as "pretty ok at this thing" as I thought I was.
• The list of stuff I need to learn grew once again.
• At least that list of stuff deals with game insight more than with technical things now.

I really wish all the newbies will get the chance to experience this so they realise how much we need to do to reach the goals of beating Stockholm and Malmö within the year and eventually reach the Slaughters Daughters goal of becoming the best in Sweden. Vi ken doo diis!!

Derby kisses,
Dutchess

Team ambitions

Last Thursday the training was cancelled in the last moment due to not enough sign-ups and I got so dissapointed. I had been looking forward to it asif it was christmas morning even though it's Thursdays that we train on the sticky floor. I love this sport so much!

The last time I remember being this enthousiastic about sports is when I was still trampolining. Oh yes. As a teenager I used to train quite a lot on those big white (blue edged) trampolines. I belonged to the junior top ten of Holland too and i LOVED doing it. Could imagine being on a trampoline several hours 5 days a week and I even got offered that chance, but my mother felt like that went too far and wanted me to stay young and unburdoned. Why trampolining you ask? I started out with gymnastics, but then had to get a big operation on my wrist at age 11. My left arm is now about 4 cm shorter than my right and that was the end of gymnastics. I figured I didn't have to cary my weight on my hands in trampolining and moved over to that in stead. So far trampolining has been the thing that I was my best at. You know, if you have to pick one thing in your life that were really good at, I would say trampolining without a doubt.

My enthusiasm for Roller Derby kinda feels the same as the joy I used to have with trampolining and I really hope that the ambitions that some of us in the team have will find enough back up with the entire team to get there. This is the first time I'm part of a team sport and now is the first time I'm starting to realise the effect of different ambitions. Everyone is different and has different goals and wishes in life as well as in Roller Derby and that is beatiful. I now have to learn to accept this even when these different goals and wishes have an effect on my own ambitions as well.

"There is no I in team."

Derby kisses,
Dutchess

Stockholm-Malmö

Lat weekend the teams from Stockholm and Malmö skated the first official bout in Sweden (congrats to Malmö). Or at least the first one with a full track officials- and ref team. Today I finally found the hole bout online and watched it. You know, when our Lady Lovelyblocks said that we can be beat either of them within the year, I thought she was just saying that to pep us up, but having seen the match and knowing how fast our team is progressing (50% of us have only been skating since two months) I think we actually can. The experienced part of our team is already at that level and we are working our asses of to catch up with them.

If we manage to get some bouts going, this will be a very very interesting year! Looking forward to it.

Derby kisses,
Dutchess

PS love our luleå team! No aspiring Italians! *hugs to all the Slaughters Daughters*

Jamming heaven

Man I love jamming! I'm not very good at it, because as I explained in a previous post, I need more agility in avoiding last minute booty blocks (breaking fast and hard and/or jumping to the sides) to avoid blocking them in the back, which is a foul. But gees I love it! I love seeing how more and more girls actually dare to throw themselves in my way. I recieved a serious tackle from MADicken today and Cherry Lawless doesn't move out of the way anymore.


My fitness isn't really good enough for being a jammer either since I need more than 2 mins to regain consiousness after a serious jam so it's time for the snow to finally disappear so I can start running again.

Derby kisses,
Dutchess

Blood!

Nah.. just a few drops that pressed themselves through my tights once I got home. I thought it was hurting a bit more than I expected. It's so funny with falls. I never really remember how I fall and then it's the marks that show up afterwards that sort of get to tell the story of how it happened.

Tonight I jammed two jams (not in a row, then I'd be dead right now) and close to the end of the second one I got tackled, lost my balance and slid on my side. Somehow I hurt myself by kicking the wheels of one foot into my shin on the other leg. But... I got up and finished the jam.

Den ska nog få fina färger tror jag

The picture isn't very good (and the injury itself isn't of the highest quality either), but I wanted to share/document it here anyways.

Derby Kisses,
Dutchess

Apex jumping

The jammer move of "jumping the apex" came up in a "rule of the day" conversation today. Saying that it's a very cool move, but also a very dangerous one.

The rule that was discussed was that you ar not allowed to initiate contact while you have both skates of the ground. I have actually seen vids (which I can't find now) where a blocker jumped shoulder first sideways into another skater, but normally you wouldn't want to put yourself in that kind of danger. The result is a major missconduct penalty (if you're lucky and didn't also get some broken bones). A situation in which it might happen by accident however, is the apex jumping that jammers sometimes do. In this vid it's done by Quadzilla (coach of the Rat City Rollergirls) while he tries to pass a full pack of only opposing blockers.

What is interesting or maybe even more of a "miss" in the current version of the rules is that it is fully legal to initiate contact with a skater that is airborn aslong as you yourself are following all the rules (skating direction, legal hitting zones, etc).

Dutchess.

Black and blue!

I'll have to wait and see but my arms feel like they will soon sport some new and pretty derby kisses, left there by the wonderfull BadAss Babuska.

We did some more jams tonight and in both set-ups the other team made sure to either have a terminator as well (BadAss Babuska) or to have a blocker that would focus on me specifically (Roadkill). In a way I feel honored that I seem scary enough to get the other team to put a blocker on me specifically, but damn it made it hard to do my job! And Roadkill was nice, she would just stuff her ass in my face or push me out of bounds, but BadAss there.. oh my.. She goes for it. You can almost see this virtual reality screen in front of her face on which some cross hairs zoom in on you and then start blinking: "Target acquired! Kill!" And my brain just goes: "don't fall on the ass don't fall on the ass don't fall on the ass, shit there went their jammer!"

I didn't fall on my ass at least.

Derby kisses,
Dutchess

25/5min

Today we trained speed speed speed and low low low. This through different excersizes amongst which the so called Finnish snake (speed). We closed of the training with the "minimum skills" test of: how many laps can you do in 5 minutes? You are supposed to be able to do 25. We can't really plot out an actual flattrack with the right sizes in the skatehall because there are some ramps in the way. But we made the long sides a bit shorter and the short sides a bit longer and hoped that it would be about the same distance as one lap on an official track. On this track I managed to skate 31 laps in 5 mins! I wont change it on my list of minimum skills yet, since I'm not sure about the total distance of these laps, but it felt good to have tried something that comes close to it at least.

At the end there was even talk of booking a training in Pontus hallen where Slaughters Daughters had their latest bout. They have a wooden floor there which is supposed to be the Valhalla of Roller Derby so I am very excited about that and looking forward to it.

Derby kisses,
Dutchess

Imaging

I just watched the one and only (top secret) video there is of me on skates. It was filmed by Djana on my very first training and oh my.. it would be nice if I could get someone to shoot some new images now and then I can show you guys the progress. Not progress because I'm so good, but progress because this is a sport in which you will progress fast, especially the first weeks.

Soo.. someone please take pics and shoot vids on a training! Nice pics please.. that make me look erm.. vicious or skilled or something. ;)

Derby kisses,
Dutchess

Offensive, defensive and refs!

Some more scrimmaging today in the hall with the sticky floor. Because of the floor we did one minute jams (instead of two mins). But man, it's difficult to play both offensive and defensive at the same time. Did I finally understand how to occupy an opposing jammer to make room on the inside for my own jammer, does the other jammer fly by on the outside! Yes there are others in the team to take care of that, but the bad thing about it is that I didn't even realise it untill after our jammer passed and I started looking for the other one... oh.. she passed us? And that happened again and again. I guess I should be happy that I can skate AND occupy another blocker now.. and should just hang in there and hope that with time I will know how to do more than two things at once? Skate, defend, offend, pace, etc etc
A few weeks ago I could only skate... a bit.

It was really nice that we actually had two of our refs (Don't know their Derby names or even if they have them yet) there as well. It meant they got training on spotting what's happening and we learned that we used way too many elbows. You don't notice that stuff in the heat of the moment so it's really nice to have someone in the middle shouting it out at you the moment you commit the foul.

Time for bed now, long day tomorrow.

Derby kisses,
Dutchess

Injury free for a week!

Feeling great! It's my first full week of Roller Derby without a single injury (or taking care of older injuries). At the same time the temperature here has risen to 0°C, the sun is shining, the birds are singing and life is getting better again! :D

At the end of monday's training I screamed out: "oh! some girls got injured but not me!! :D" I felt so ashamed as soon as it came out. Of course I felt bad for the others that did get hurt, but I was so surprised that I wasn't part of them that the words just flew out. Thankfully there were no permanent or serious injuries though.

The last two training sessions were great with lots of packtraining which means lots of actual gamesituation simulations. I'm SO looking forward to some actual bouts. This sport really does make you feel like a super hero.

Derby kisses,
Dutchess

Bootylicious Beyonslay!

Just have to share this with you guys. Beyonslay is a girl that skates for the Gotham girls in the states and I think she is awesome! She has these really smooth looking blocks that hit like a locomotive at full speed at the end of the line.

Im not sure how versatile she is, but this signature booty bump is great!

Me big, me jammer. RAWR?

People that have met me and hear that I play Roller Derby usually assume that I play as a blocker. I myself have allways assumed I'm a blocker as well. I'm tall, I'm strong, I'm steady and i'm not super agile (as in fast direction changes and stuff). However, today another trait of mine showed it's face and proved to be very handy.

We did some game training with four girls on each team (so three blockers + one jammer) and swapped rolls after each jam. Just to see where people's talents lie and to see the game from different points of views. When it was my turn to jam and I started to aproach the pack I noticed that some of the opposing girls were deliberately not stepping in my way and one tiny voice even screamed: "Dutchess, du är läskig!" and then she moved aside. Also, when I have a bit of speed (which you are supposed to have when jamming) people marking their spots on me (soft tackling/blocking/nudging) didn't really have a big effect on me.

This experience has really opened up my eyes even more on bodytype vs RD role. All the different bodytypes and playing styles have different advantages in all the roles. Body type really isn't the deciding factor for if you will be good at RD or in which position you will play. Especially with jamming. Jamming is much more about seeing the paths through the pack and seeing how these paths change and anticipating on that. Knowing the postions of your own blockers and knowing how they play, how/where will they occupy that other blocker to open a path for you?

Heh, this kind of reminds me of a game I used to play when I was younger. I used to bike through the city center shopping area (pedestrian zone) and try to bike as fast as possible while still avoiding all the pedestrians. I felt so cool when I was on a roll. Because you know, it's an important skill for ... erm.. jamming later on in life!

Today's training was awesome! I've learned so much. I love this sport!!

Derby kisses,
Dutchess

Minimum skills updated

The WFTDA has set up a text that discusses minimum skills that a rollergirl must posess before she is allowed to participate in a WFTDA bout. I think most of the stuff on that list is very good so I've taken a version of it and posted it here as an updatable file (see "Minimum skills" to the right).

When you train for something you want to be able to measure the results to make sure your training is actually helping you progress in the direction you want to go. And since we don't really have enough bouts yet (and during bouts your result is of course also depending on the other players), I decided to have this checklist of minimum skills which I can adjust as I go.

So this list is mostly for myself to keep track of my fresh meat skills, but I figured it might be interesting to some of you to see what minimum skills are involved.

Derby kisses,
Dutchess

Leg whipping faceplants

Only four girls at the training tonight. What the hell has happened to every body!? Yes, a few are injured and a few are away, but we have more than 30 members in our league, where are they?

Having the hall to our selves did give us enough room to try out some fun stuff. We did som pushing and tackling and some different kinds of whipping. During the last 15 mins we even tried out a bit of leg whipping. Want an explanation? Any whip is one skater giving their momentum to another skater. I can whip myself off of another girl's hips and pull myself past her. It can leave the other girl standing still or if Miss Maniac is the one grabbing the hips, the other girl might even end up on the other side of the track (on her butt if she is unlucky), but all that doesn't matter. What matters is that the one taking the whip is getting more speed. Another whip is a simple arm one. The front girl holds out an arm and the girl aproaching from the back gets slingshotted forward when grabbing that arm. There are several ways of whipping, but the leg whip is the most spectacular version.

As this vieo shows, the girl in front lifts one leg to the back. The girl-to-be-whipped grabs the foot and gets propelled while the foot gets drawn back to it's owners body.

When you're less prepared for the decelleration that follows (as the one giving the whip), chances are you'll end up in a full prostitute! (called a "super man" in this video)

If you then only just recovered from a knee injury and are still unwillingly protecting your knee when falling and therefor don't bend your knees, it turns into a full chest slide that will leave you breathless for a minute or two.

But it was an awesome training! Really, it was! :D

Derby kisses,
Dutchess

The hip-whip-snake

Party has come and gone (was absolutely awesome!), danced most of the night on high heels, thought I was gonna have to pay for that with my knee the next day, but no. I am fully recovered. Yay! Well, still the tiniest hint of pain in my ribs, but those I don't have to skate on ;). Practiced all falls in pack formation today, even the double knee and the prostitute. Because of my ribs I stayed away from the barrel roll though, gonna give that at least one more week to fully heal.

Then we practiced some fast turns and running on toe-stops/fast starts as well. No real contact tonight. Well ok, a little in the snake with hip whips and the waitress whip. Really liked tonights training, lots of technical stuff. I kinda miss the contact, but so far I've gotten hurt every single time we did some contact excersizes. We have a lot of new girls (myself included) and it feels safer to take lots of technique first.

And.. there was talk of a bout around easter some time (insert excited puppy sounds here). I will of course keep you posted on the details as soon as I know them.

Derby kisses,
Dutchess

Tk-tk-tk-tk-tk say my skates on LTU's tiles

Today was awesome! Who doesn't dream of being allowed to skate in their school? Well.. maybe there are many that don't dream of that, but I have when I was little and today I got to do that in full Derby outfit! Met some classmates and even a teacher... Yes... erm. Was interesting.

Rolling a lap through the university's lunchroom at lunchtime was also a fun experience. People looking up from their food going: WTF!?

Someone said: put a pair of skates on a girl and she starts to smile. But even guys respond very positively to girls on skates. I had so much fun riding up and down the tiled hallway (tk-tk-tk-tk), going low, pretending to charge in on people walking in my direction and everybody smiled at it and played with it. It was great! BadAss Babuska kept saying how I was beaming with joy and I really did have a lot of fun.

So excited for the fundraiser on Saturday! It's gonna be a blast! (call me if you don't have you ticket yet)

Derby kisses,
Dutchess

New trick mastered!

One of the many reasons why I love this sport is because you can easily see yourself progress. Not every month but every week! Most of us have skated as a kid, wether it was on roller skates, inlines or iceskates (or all three) and when we were younger we tried new tricks all day. Who would dare to jump over the biggest ramp, the hole in the ice (oh yeah, I did that), who can turn the fastest or do the longest spin, who can perform the coolest stop, skate the longest on one leg or do the coolest onelegged trick? Having tried all those things over and over again when you were young has created a form of physical memory. I wouldn't call it muscle memory just because I'm not sure if that would hold that long (at least 20 years in my case), but it's at least very similar to it. That type of memory kicks in when you try new tricks that you were able to perform in ancient history. You still need to practice to get the trick down. I mean, you grew quite a bit since you were 10 and it's been a while, but the basics are there for you to adjust to the current situation by practicing. At least that's my little theory about  this.

A few weeks after I started practicing with the awesome Slaughters Daughters I could hardly skate half a lap on only my right foot while being pushed. Yesterday I could easily do two and now the distance was no longer limited by balance difficulties but by muscle endurance in my right leg. Yay!

I also managed to get the feeling back for doing crossovers while skating backwards. And I'm pretty sure that I managed to get this done because I used to do it on my hokeyskates when I was little. Of course I also managed to fall on my pretty little behind *cough* again, but at least I have less pain of that now than I did the first time round. Yay again!

I can really recommend this sport to any girl who is just slightly curious. Try it once. It will be hard, but you will also find that your body recognises some of it and after the first hour you will already have improved immensely!

Derby kisses,
Dutchess

Painkillers hmmm...

So last night I took a high dose of slow release perscription painkillers which I have to say are doing their job quite nicely. Will definitely take another dose of those tonight. I mean, it still hurts, but so much less than yesterday.

Tomorrow's training is a dedicated fresh meat training and I think I will take part in it. I'll try and stay away from falls, jumps and tackling exercizes and just do some easy rolling, some agility, to not lose the tiny amount of "feeling" I have at the moment and to slowly start training up the muscles around my knee again.

Derby kisses,
from a slightly better feeling Dutchess

AAAaaaargggghhhhh!!

I'm gonna cry soon. I really hope that this period of injury after injury will pass at some stage so that I can just train and play the game. Now that the pain in my knee has started to go down (I still couldn't do more than half an hour of training on it) the pain in my ribcage is getting more obvious. I hurt it on the same night as my knee by rolling over my arm during a barrel roll fall. So far it was an annoying pain that came up with heavy breathing, coughing and stabalising activity in my stomach and back muscles, but now it's hurting continuously, I hear clicks when I roll around on to my other side and the pain is almost unbearable when I move about or cough. I don't think the rib is broken but even if it is, the doc wont do anything. So all I can do is wait.. wait.. and then wait some more. I'm going nuts and fat due to not training (tried 45 mins of low intensity biking at the gym, but that left my knee hurting like crazy afterwards) and being in pain is so tiring!

This was the moment I stopped training full contact karate all those years ago. I was getting some form of minor injury as soon as the previous one was almost healed and decided I didn't want to live in pain on purpose. Why would I want to do this to myself? Back then the only pro I ended up finding was "because it's cool/tough to be good at this as a girl!"

I'm not giving up yet.. but man I'm feeling very down about this all. I really hope that this is just a beginners period of shit. The other beginners don't seem to get injured as much though. So what is this? I'm not generally a cluts.. or am I.. *looks at the previous post about all the broken bones while growing up*

Meh.

PS Sorry about all the whining. But this is a blog about the journey of becoming a player in a full contact sport. Journeys go up and down. If not they are nothing to be proud of in the end. ;)

Mothers

When growing up and even a bit after that I attracted a lot of a injuries playing outdoors, amongst which a fractured pinky, heelbone, wrist and elbow, but also lots of scrapings and sprains. The wrist and elbow needed operations to prevent the joint from becoming disfunctional (some of you have seen the under arm length difference). After a while of coming home crying and in pain a lot it almost came as far as me not daring to go home when I had injured myself because in the end my loving mother would just get angry in stead of expressing pity: "what did you do now!?"

The elbow was the most recent one at age 21 (by then I wasn't living at home anymore). I had fallen off a horse and while I was coming down head first-ish I somehow decided it would be a good thing to catch myself on a stretched out arm. Needless to say that was not one of my best ideas ever. When I came home from the hospital that same night I was seriously doubting if I should call my mother to inform her that her one and only duckling had once again hurt herself. In the end I did and the expected sighs came instantly. I remember saying something like: "but really mom, it feels like this has been the last serious injury in my life now. I'm done with getting injured."

Now try and imagine me explaining to her that I joined a Roller Derby team.

She wondered why on earth I would want to sabbotage my nice life by getting a broken leg and I of course answered with the non-argument of the possibility of getting hit by a bus when crossing the street the next day. I also admitted that it is indeed a risk. It's a full contact sport so injuries can be a part of it, but then I went on to say that it is because my life is working out so nicely since a few years that I would be able to take a broken leg without any major problems. And I truely believed that.

After going around with a sprained knee for less than a week I am not so sure of that statement anymore. I've only missed two Derby trainings and some inbetween activity of strength training and walks, I can still bike, I can even walk! Well, I walk very slowly and after about 100 meters it starts to hurt. But still, this is nothing compared to 6 weeks in a cast and I'm going nuts already!

Now I'm just nagging. Gonna see how my knee takes some low resistance biking at the gym today.

PS Haven't called my mother since I hurt my knee.

No skating.. just watching

So.. here I go on sunday and now tonight on monday again, to the skatehall. Not to skate, no, to watch *grumble*. We got a few more new girls and two of them have size boat, just like me, so I figured as long as I can't roll in my lovely skates myself, I might as well give the new girls a chance to roll in them. We don't really have that much stuff to loan out yet.

To not get bored I took my camera with me on sunday. Next time I should bring my tripod as well, because this was damn hard in the bad lighting.

The sisters doing some light tackling.

Yay! Thorey's first time on skates since childhood. The skates are mine.

Whip it!

Not just fun and games. Strength training is important to take and give the hits as well as to take a fall.

Still no footage of me on skates! I have some from my very first training, but that is top secret material with a need-to-know label and you do NOT need to know. Once the first learning curve starts to flatten out a bit I'll try and get some new pics or maybe even a vid.

Derby kisses,
Dutchess

Slaughters Daughters fundraiser

Woohoo! Our flyer is finished! Check it out:

Click here to go to the Facebook event

For the moment the tickets are only up for presale at Hardwear in town, but I'm still waiting for info on wether or not I will get some tickets to sell as well. Either way there is only a limited number of tickets available. Let me know if you are planning to join us and if you got your ticket yet!

Derby kisses,
Dutchess

Dutchess gets terminated

So... twice to the doctor in 48 hours. Both times because of Roller Derby. The first time to make sure that all the hits on my spine and pelvis hadn't caused a more serious injury and then today because of last night's training:

We got to do a couple of jams again. Yay! In the first jam I got to try out the position of Terminator again, this time against a more experienced rollergirl and dang! it's a fun position. I didn't expect to be able to catch miss Monkey at all, since she's good at jumping from side to side to fool you and then sprint past you on the other side. She's very agile on skates where as I am mainly trying to hold my balance while doing checks and trying to find tricks to stay balanced when an expected impact doesn't happen (see earlier post). But I managed to tackle her once and block her a few times. It felt awesome!

Then the second jam we had to change roles and BadAss Babuska thought that I should try out the position of jammer. Now, if you've read the other post on practice jams and watched the vids I posted, you can figure out that the jammer is the one that gets the highest speed and is also the one that everyone of the opposing team is trying to block/tackle. Miss Monkey, who I previously drove out of bounds and who then ended up on the floor, was now going to be a blocker concentrating on me... And then the opposing jammer was Scary Mary, a girl with nice speed and good overview on who is where and how to react to that. I felt so out of place!

But there the pack takes off, I get on my toestops and on the second "GO!" I try out the toestop running that we just tried for the first time a week ago. I am sure Scary Mary took it easy, cause I made it first into the first turn. I can't for the life of me remember what everybody else in the pack was doing, but Miss Monkey looks back, stares me straight in the eye and tenses up, ready to skate into me. I brace myself and lo and behold, I can take the hit and make it past her. I can't really remember any of the other stuff happening, but the result was that Scary Mary made it through the pack first. I didn't care, I made it past Miss Monkey! On the second lap the same situation more or less gets set up, but this time the outer bounds of the track are made up by a wall and I get plowed into it by Miss Monkey. The next .5 sec is what made me go to the doctor today, I get scared, come out of derby position (ie stand up straight) and land in a front to back split, sandwhiched between the lovely Miss Monkey and the stupid wall. The foot I had backwards, was 'nicely' rotated out so that my knee only just didn't snap like a boiled chicken leg.

The doctor told me that I should take it easy on my knee for a while but that there is no serious damage done. So no torn ligaments or fractured bones. The ligaments have just been stretched in an extreme way. When I asked her if I could be part of this sunday's training, she laughed. I hope to be back on skates soon!

Derby party!

As some of you know, Slaughters Daughters are throwing a fundraiser party on the 19th of february at Magasin 3. Today after an awesome training that had jumping in it we had a meeting about what the party will entail. We finally have two bands and there will be quite some merchandising. We will even have a special Roller Derby drink. I am so much looking forward to it! The only downside to it is that we wont be able to do the on the spot photography. We were gonna use a polaroid camera to be able to take on the spot pictures with your favourite rollergirl, but the film to those camera's is just too damn expensive. If any of you have another cheap, free of hassle, ponsored idea, let me know!

I think that on yesterday's fall I actually hurt my right SI joint (where the spine joins the pelvis). The ligaments and muscles were a tad sensitive already due to the first big fall I had on it two weeks earlier, so now it's all just saying: "Stop! And play dead for a while! NAO!" I will try not to of course. As long as the bone isn't hurt you use it or lose it! I had to sit out on the situps and other stuff on the floor though. It was too painfull to move around on the floor. I'm sorry for this downer, but that's all part of Derby. I shouldn't really complain, in the mean time we have a girl sitting at home with a broken rib.

Contact me for tickets to the party (they're at the printer, i'll let you know when I have them) and come have a derby drink with your favo rollergirl! *glares*

Derby kisses,
Dutchess

The terminator

Today we did a lot of contact training and at some stage we even tried a couple of jams! Yay!

We were eight in total so four in each team. With a track that was a bit smaller than an official flat track that worked out just nicely, I think. The teams were made up of two experienced girls and two pieces of fresh meat. The tall miss Maniac was on the other team and was guestimated to be holding the inside of the track. Since I was tall too I was told to go up against her and keep the inside of the track for our jammer in stead. Let me tell you that the name "miss Maniac" was given to her and not without reason. With any hint of upcoming action the lovely lady gets a spark in her eye and assumes the derby position. But I survived (psst, I don't think she went all out on me) and took most of the beating. Even managed to open up the inside of the track a few times for our Dolores DeSade to jam through.

During the second jam I got a hole new role. One that I hadn't heard of before and would like to try out with a more seasoned opposing jammer at some stage: "terminator", oh yeah, you read that right. The role of a terminator is, well, to terminate the other jammer more or less. You skate at the back side of the pack, so you have a little more room to cut the track (zoom from the inside to the outside or the other way around) and when the opposing jammer reaches the pack you take her out by skating into her side and her falling or skating out of bounds because of that. I didn't quite get the timing right yet, so I mostly ended up very close in front of the opposing jammer and bootyblocked her in stead of taking her out, but that was fun!

After the jamming we did some more blocking and jamming exercises and yes... I fell on my butt again... I really hope that I will kick this butt-falling-habit soon.

Derby kisses,
Dutchess

PS: I expect the bruise count to go up after todays tackling practice with Dolores DeSade. I'll see what it looks like tomorrow. Moar jams!!

What is Roller Derby?

For those of you still wondering what the hell I have gotten so obsessed about, here a simple explanation:

And here is another explanation with some realtime footage of games (or "bouts"):

Feel free to ask questions below. Let me know you're reading this!

Racing on my Vixens

Todays training was all about speed speed speed. Combine that with a regular sportshall floor (which is quite soft) and the work out becomes very heavy. No need to break if you want to stop so to say. Once you stop accelerating, you start tripping over your own skates because the floor just wants you to stand still. Kind of like rolling off a bike path into a sandy area. We did some races which was really nice. It was a first time for me to try and spit out as much skating power from my legs as possible and of course I could not skate as fast as Delores DeSade who is one of the experienced rollergirls on the team. Those chicks are fast! One day, maybe I will be just as fast as them.

Derby kisses,
Dutchess

Gait analysis on skates?

Today I'm looking at a long and boring day at school. Mostly boring because I have done this part before at my previous uni before I moved up here. First we'll get a long lecture on all the details of how humans (can) walk. All the muscles and nervous systems involved will pass by. After that we will actually analyse our classmate's walks.

All I can think of is trying out my new skates and being on them as many hours as possible to make it more natural for me. The hallways have a really nice floor for skating too. I wonder if you're allowed to skate at the university. Haven't seen any notices that you're not...

Oh yeah!

Now it's happening! Well, maybe not right now, but from now on.. starting on Thursday. My very own Derby skates and complete set of new pads and helmet have just arrived. I went for a different model than most beginners do because I wanted to have an aluminium plate in stead of a nylon one. And these ones have a leather boot as well. That's always nicer in the long run I think.

It's the Riedell Vixen, but mine were shipped with green wheels. The wheels that come with it are an allround wheel, which are supposed to be quite grippy. I think they might be a bit on the soft side, but I'll buy new wheels when the snow melts, then I can get an in- and outdoor set at the same time.

Ooooohhh, I can't wait to give them a spin on thursday and do some bootyblocking in them!

Tall drinks of Derby water

Today there was even more fresh meat than yesterday and three (!!) of us had the same shoesize (oh yeah.. we're all tall. This is gonna be some awesome game play once we have been trained up) with only one pair of extra skates to share amongst us. So I only got to ride the last ten mins or so. I got to roll the entire training yesterday so I wanted the other two girls to have some roller time too. Two of the fresh meat hurt their tailbone like I did last week. I wonder if that is an obligatory lesson before you really learn to lean low and forward.

At school we're doing a course about how to do physio examinations which we practice on class mates. Some of my class mates were quite interested in how I got that fine Derby kiss that I got after sunday's practice.

One leg blocking

Sooo.. I promised to write about yesterdays training. Yesterdays training was special in a way that I finally got to try out my balance while it got influenced by someone else's weight, momentum and skates, ie we got to bump into eachother. The day before I had just bought my gum shield so I was feeling extra tough. RAWR! Well.. maybe not so much since it's seethrough and I'm still borrowing my daughters cute flower covered helmet.

After having warmed up and doing some other exercises we ended up skating on one leg and swinging the other leg around to learn that we can trust either leg to carry and hold our weight. To put the exercise in context we turned it into a blocking exercise. Imagine skating straight ahead and you notice someone coming up to the side behind you. Let's say the right side. You then push off with left, put all your weight on your right skate and skate to the right hopefully bumping into that person shoulder to shoulder (while still on one skate) and pushing them out of their way so that they can't pass you. Now imagine you looking like me (1.87 m, boobs and ass to go with it) and doing that to someone who also has a strong frame (and has been playing this game for a couple of years already).... yeah. BadAzz Babuska is her name. Needless to say I was scared shitless!

Loved the bumping and pushing! Knowing that my partner could take it, I could go full out to see how much I could dish out after only three training sessions. Turns out I'm not easy to push out of the way, not even on skates. Haha, never thought I'd be genuinely happy about stating that. The hardest thing was to actually time the bump. Just imagine you are skating to the right on that one skate giving it your all, bracing yourself for impact, changing your weight to accept the impact without falling and then... no impact. I thought it was harder to stay upright then than at an actual impact.

Next training is tonight... I'm hoping to be on my own skates then (instead of a pair that is 1,5 sizes too small and aren't really derby skates). The shop in Ireland that I ordered from changed my package status to delivered last saturday, but I haven't seen the package yet.

Bruise count: +1 (see to the right)