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!