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