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)

My Derby back

So here I am after my third training. A week ago I was on quads for the first time since I was a child which resulted in me walking around with a very bad back for the entire week. I have to admit that falling on my ass and hurting my back was the best way to make sure that I do what everybody keeps telling me to do: BEND YOUR KNEES! Of course skating in a bent over position isn't something you can do for hours after you have just hurt your back, but it went ok today. I actually was on my way to fall on my ass again.. you know, arms flailing backwards, one foot off the floor in front of me, but I managed to throw my weight forward and turn it into a fall known as a "superman". You basically fall forward and slide a bit on the protection your are wearing: knee- and elbow pads and wrist protection.

Today's training brought some new and exciting exercises. A beginning of "the real shit" so to say, but I will talk more about those next time.