Eeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeek

Freaking out has begun!

Recruitment is on Thursday. I'm not ready. I've not exercised the way I need to, I've not practiced as I should. I can't do a crossover. I'm not drinking water. I can only kinda sorta do even a toe stop.

WHY AM I DOING THIS TO MYSELF?! ::hyperventilates::

Crossovers!

Skate class yesterday was fantastic. I mean, I sucked at everything we did, but we had a different teacher this time around and she not only pushed us, but she made sure she took time with everyone to try to help us with what we're doing wrong. My stance is entirely wrong on backwards skating so I have to spend the week trying to practice standing with my toes in and my knees super bent. My knees are actually a huge part of my skating problem. Apparently I need to bend them a lot more than I have been, but it just doesn't feel natural to me. I see other people skating and it always looks like they're all standing up. On the other hand, I bend to the point they keep telling me to and it feels like I'm hovering over a public toilet.

We started crossovers though. I've never actually seen a Level 2 class do crossovers. In fact, I watched the Level 3s learn how to do them and how to backwards skate, so I was never expecting Level 2s to do either. I suck at them, but I was able to do them enough that I felt what people were talking about with the sudden burst of speed when you do crossovers. I actually let myself glide a few times around corners instead of crossing over because the speed was a bit overwhelming for me.

Yes, I realize I totally fail as a skater. It had me doubting whether or not I want to do derby. I've always been fairly decent at sports, so it's a bit demoralizing to find myself sucking so much at this. Blech.

Review: Modernskate.com

After a bad experience with a local skate shop, I decided to look online to see if I can find protective gear at a good price. I came across Modernskate.com via Google Shopping and, seeing no negative reviews, decided to give them a try.

This was a fantastic decision.

Modernskate's customer service was fantastic. I sent them an email after placing an order due to the fact that I was shipping to an address that wasn't my billing address (I always ship to my job anymore because UPS just leaves my packages on the ground outside of my apartment and we have a bit of a crime issue.) They apparently have a policy that flags some shipments that go to other billing addresses so that follow up is required in order to ensure the card is yours (a great safety idea that I never even thought of.) They responded quickly to let me know everything's good and the shipment will go out later that day or the next day. I received confirmation by the end of the day (approximately 24 hours after shipping) and received my items about 3 business days later. This was using their free shipping option, which is usually ridiculously slow with most other companies.

The pricing was also much better than most other shops. I went with Triple 8 KP Pro knee pads (I know, I know, not as good as Shae's 187s, but pretty close and without the bulk.) They were $60 through a local skate shop, $75 from a number of other stores, but only $42 through ModernSkate.com. I ended up picking up knee pads and elbow pads for the same price as just the knee pads from the local shop.

All in all, it was an excellent experience that I will be repeating in the future when I've killed these pads. I'll also be recommending them to anyone in search of gear at recruitment night next week.

Goals

It was a little quiet today, so I've spent part of my day in between projects going through derby blogs for information. A lot of it is the same information I've received at other sites. What made it all so interesting was hearing the different emotions and stories behind all of it. There were girls who have been injured, women who never made the team, coaches, refs, fresh meat, veterans, lifelong fans... It's all pretty amazing. Derby has such a long history; it feels weird to think I might be a part of that. Not that I actually think I'll be a big part of it, but the sport is well-documented thanks to the power of the Internet, and now I'm adding my voice as potential fresh meat.

I've been talking with a couple of my friends off and on about derby stuff, getting ready for recruitment night in just a few weeks. Two of us are going to recruitment night in two weeks, the other is going to the next recruitment for her local team an hour away from us (date TBD, so we'll get to see her getting all nervous whenever that happens.) The nerves are giving us a little extra energy, so we're starting some conditioning work to try to prepare. Will we be ready in two weeks? Fuck, no. But we'll be more prepared than we were in the beginning. My afterhours time at home is peppered with random squats, lunges, toe stop walks and attempts to glide across my kitchen on one foot.

Roxy Horror mentioned that we should set goals. This week, I'll be setting goals and thinking of ways I can make them happen. Once I make my list, I'll post them here so I can be held accountable for them. I'll probably end up posting the WFTDA skills list as well. While we're not really held to them in OSDA, they all seem like skills I need anyways.

Saturday Class

Yesterday's class and skate session was a weird mix of positives and negatives. Positive: I had a really good sense of balance going forward. I could step out on the rink and just get to skating. My endurance is picking up as well. Negative: My legs weren't cooperating at times and my skates were vibrating like crazy. I kept stopping before I was ready as a result. Shae mentioned something about my bearings possibly being dirty so I look at my skates - yeah, they're filthy. Not necessarily the bearings, but there's a load of crud all over the wheels. I know jack shit about skate maintenance so I posted on FB a call for help, and luckily enough received a response! Laura was my absolutely savior and let me come over today for a lesson in skate maintenance. We loosened my trunks, she showed me how to tighten my toe stops and taught me everything I need to know about cleaning bearings. Apparently I was supposed to wipe down my wheels about once a week or two, so it took a lot more effort to get the thick crud off the wheels, but now you can finally see the swirly pattern on them again! (I might not be able to skate, but at least I look good when making an ass of myself on the rink.) We took the bearings apart but that was a huge pain. I apparently have very large bearings (they're the generic ones that come with the skates) so it took a ton of effort just to get them in and out, never mind taking them apart. I need to upgrade my wheels for derby anyways so I shot rollergirl.ca an email today with order questions and will simply put on new wheels and bearings next time these need to be cleaned.

Now I'm worried - what if I fall a lot now that I don't have the layer of gunk making my wheels grippy? My wheels are too hard for the surface we skate on, and it's going to be a little while before my new ones come in (aka I've not ordered them yet.) Laura warned me that the cleaning combined with the hardness of the wheels means I'm going to have a little bit of a tough time when I first get out there. I don't mind looking like an idiot in class/public skate but I don't want to go to my first day of recruitment falling all over the place. I had actually reached a point on Saturday where, other than the vibrations, I felt ready to start doing crossovers, even though they're a level 3 thing. I won't learn them until I can start moving backwards a bit and can master one leg turns, but I feel ready to at least start the basic movements now.

Oh, right, backwards skating. I almost forgot to mention that. I can't backwards skate to save my life. Everyone else was able to start getting themselves to move, whereas I'm just sitting there. I can't even figure out how to get myself to start moving. Maybe now that it will be easier to get my wheels going, I'll have an easier time at backwards movement.

Time until recruitment: 1 week, 4 days.

To skate or not to skate

Tonight is the night that I normally would go to open skate, but I'm not sure if I'll be going or not. I really want to; its killing me not to be on my skates. However, on Sunday when I went to open skate, I had a lot of sweat getting into my eyes, causing me to rub at them. Well, when I rubbed at them, my contact scratched my eye a bit, which means I'm wearing glasses for the moment. Skating with glasses on sort of freaks me out. I've never done it before and quite honestly I don't want to start now. What if I fall? What if my glasses fall off? Plus I hate getting sweaty when wearing these. Hell, I just flat out hate wearing them. There's the constantly pressure on your nose, the oil that seems to gather where they touch my face... I just want my contacts back. ;_;

So now the question is - to skate or not to skate? When I miss my normal Wednesday skate session, I feel unprepared for my Saturday skate lessons. I know it's just beginner classes, but I really need them (obviously. I mean, I wouldn't be spending the money and hanging around so many little kids if I didn't.) But I want to try to move into the Level 3 classes before recruitment night, which means I have two Saturday sessions left. I'm getting pretty close, I think. Sunday when I went skating, I was able to get my foot up long enough to say "sectumsemptra" a few times, which is awesome. I still can't shoot the duck, but I think skating on one foot while standing is the main skill necessary to move up. I need to get to a point where I can skate on the one foot while making a turn. I can barely make a turn on two feet, so we'll see how this goes. I need a LOT more practice than I can actually afford.

Nerdiness and Athleticism?

As you may have guessed from the title of this blog, I am a nerd. A huge nerd, to be honest. Most days, I'd rather be home reading than doing anything else. I enjoy the occasional comic book (a love I learned from my fifth grade best friend who adored the X-men), game of D&D, renfaire, a good LARPing session, surfing the Internet, Doctor Who, Firefly and, of course, Harry Potter (from which the blog received it's name. I've long been known in my group of friends for my love of and amusement with Aberforth Dumbledore. It's to the point where people see goats and think of me.)

So. I don't get out much. Renfaire is the closest thing to exercise in my life. However, a few years ago I found out that there were a couple of different roller derby teams in the area. As a kid, roller derby seemed like the best career choice a person could make. I wanted to spend my days skating around in awesome clothing, getting into fights and being bad ass. My mom disagreed and rarely took me to the rink as a kid. She swore I was going to break a wrist. Then they demolished the rink when I was around 8 or so in order to build a new highway, so there went my roller derby dreams. When I found out about the two teams in the area, I knew I had to join. I kept an eye on their myspace pages, trying to figure out which one was actually active (which ended up being just the Tourist City Terrors, which I think broke into Sintral Florida Derby Demons and Orlando Psycho City Derby Girls? Maybe? I'm not all that updated on local derby drama.)

Anyways, now we have the Orlando Psycho City Derby Girls, Sintral Florida Derby Demons, Thunder City Derby Sirens, and Florida Derby League. OPCD and FDL are both OSDA leagues, whereas TCDS and SFDD are WFTDA leagues. Sintral Florida's a bit too far. Thunder City looked promising (and had the bonus of me already knowing someone on the team) but after doing a test drive this weekend to a bout, I don't think I can do it. The team was fantastic and people seemed really nice, but the drive is just too far for me. I used a quarter of a tank just getting there and back. Make that twice a week until fall when I can only go to practice once a week due to my school schedule? Yeah, sadly not going to happen. Florida Derby League is new and has the additional bonus of offering boot camps to help get people in shape, but it's co-ed which makes me feel nervous. I want to be bad ass, but at the same time I'm not prepared to be knocked over by 250lb muscular guys on a regular basis. (Yet, somehow getting knocked over by 250lb muscular women isn't an issue? I don't know why, but in my head, it's not.)

So OPCD it is. They have recruitment coming up, which I'm excited/nervous about. I love watching their games. This league was actually my first exposure to live derby matches, so they'll always hold a special place in my heart. They have awesome nerdy themed matches (last night was a RHPS match in which we were obnoxious spectators who did the Time Warp, called out call lines and corrected the mispronunciations of the team's names by the announcer.) They seem like a great group of people, and it's only about a 25 minute drive from my house. I also like that most of their bouts are home bouts as well. With work and school, it's so much easier for me if I just have local derby practices, bouts and promos (or whatever they call the extra work that goes into making derby happen. In faire, we call them promos.) without the joys of driving 3 hours down to Palm Beach or up to Jacksonville or whereever else once a month or so. They have recruitment on June 30th, so I'll go in and see how this goes.

I'm more than a little worried though. I'm not a strong skater. I really want this and am willing to work hard, but I'm very out of shape anymore. I used to be in decent shape thanks to softball as a kid and strenous faire activities and a semester of powderpuff football during my first attempt at going to college. I'm trying to get up to the rink to practice as much as possible, but I'm just not catching on as quickly as I feel I should. I also picked up some bad habits when I tried to teach myself to skate and now that I'm taking lessons at the rink, I have to try to erase all of those bad habits. I was really encouraged when I was able to stand up straight and move a little without touching the wall after just two lessons but now I feel like I'm not improving at as quick of a pace. I've stagnated in a major way. I don't feel like I'm strengthening my skills and my legs are killing me after just a couple of laps. My right leg is the worst. While my left leg points fairly straight, my right leg points a little to the right. I think it might actually be from all of the softball in my formulative years. My right leg was always pressed against a base, turned sideways to help maximize my push, or turned to help me run towards the left after a ball, as covering third base made it rare for the ball to go towards my right. So now it won't go straight without expending extra energy. My whole body tries to go towards the right. I don't know if it's normal or not, but it doesn't feel normal. My right leg is always killing me after skating, whereas my left leg feels like it could go on forever.

I'm worried that I'm not going to be in shape by recruitment. I'm worried that my skating skills will be so bad that I'm asked not to come back until the next recruitment, which might not necessarily work in with my school schedule. I'm worried that my natural shyness will hinder my progress. I'm worried that I'll get out there, take a fall and break my wrist or tailbone on my first day of recruitment. And most of all, I'm worried that I'll put in all of the work and never reach the level I need to. I'm scared that I'll do all of this and not even be drafted onto a team. How disappointing would that be? And how embarrassing? I'd hate to have to be like "Yeah, no, I didn't make it onto a team" when my non-derby friends ask me how derby is going. Hell, they're already asking me as if I'm on it, and all I'm doing at this point is taking the beginner classes at the skate rink that have absolutely nothing to do with derby.

We'll see. This week I'm watching what I'm eating, drinking more water, and attempting more exercise in order to prep for recruitment. About three weeks to go until Day 1!