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.
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!
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!
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.
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!
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!
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!!
