Review: Riedell Toe Guards

I bought a set of Riedell toe guards at the rink in Kissimmee when I was there for an open skate session since the rink we skate at for practice does not allow us to use tape on our skates. I skate on Sure Grips which are a little too wide for traditional toe snouts, so I just picked up the standard style toe guards.

These things were awful.

For one thing, they felt really flimsy on my skate. No matter how much I tried to tighten things down, they kept slipping all over the place. I was certain that a good fall would rip them up. They never did rip but that's because I had to take them off in the first hour of practice.

Why?

Because when I did a knee fall, the light blue color of the toe guard left blue skid marks on the rink.

>.<

The owners absolutely *baby* our rink. It's so well cared for that I felt instantly guilty for it. Luckily, we were in the beginner's rink so I didn't fuck up the actual rink. But still - even the beginner's rink is a million times better than the rink we used to skate on.

Now I don't know what I'm going to do with these toe guards. I still need toe guards desperately because the constant falling is killing my skates, but now I can't return these ones because they're very definitely used (they have a huge scuff on them) and I can't afford new ones because of the upcoming physical therapy costs. Boooo.

An emo post

Today was the first day in this recruitment that I realized - I can't do this. I can't. Skating is painful. My body has adjusted to the brace already and simply moved the pain above and below it. Today we did an exercise where we skated five laps, did two cool-downs, waited for everyone else, then skated six laps sticky skate, waited for everyone to catch up, then did seven laps. I was ready to cry halfway through the sticky skating. I have to push on that bad ankle in order to make it around, and I just can't do that. It's horrible.

It didn't help that today was the first day of physical therapy. My ankle was poked and prodded for about an hour before going in there. The physical therapist said that I have to work on improving movement of the dorsiflexion. I have 2 degrees of movement right now. Apparently I should have 10 to 15. Basically, I can't keep my foot straight and bend my leg at the same time... something that's kind of important for skating. So I need to do a few weeks of physical therapy, and then probably a lifetime to exercises at home to both stretch and strengthen those muscles. However, my insurance doesn't cover it. Not for a long time anyways. I have to pay a $40 copay each time for the visit, PLUS the full cost of the actual therapy until I hit my $2,000 deductible (fun fact: I have nowhere near $2000.) The physical therapist is also worried that I'll just undo all of the work we do when I go skating, so I'm trying to keep it easy. I told the coach what's going on and was told not to jump, and sit down when it started giving me trouble. I hate this. I hate this so much.

I want to do this. I want to do this so bad. But I don't know if I'm strong enough to handle it.

Weekly Goals

Goals I posted last week and their current status:

1. Do a crossover during warm-ups on Wednesday. - Successful! Plus we worked a bit on them on Monday and I felt better about them. Am I perfect? No. But I'm definitely better off than before, particularly now that I have the brace.
2. Scrounge up the money for an open-skate session. - Successful! Open skate at a rink in Kissimmee. I had lots of fun, even if I ended up quitting after about an hour and 20 minutes due to ankle pain.
3. Finish reading "Down and Derby". - Done and passed on to Shae!
4. Do ankle-strengthening exercises every day. - Done until Saturday, when ankle exercises became too much.
5. Drink at least 3 20 oz. cups of water per day. - Semi-successful. I definitely achieved this on weekdays, but not on the weekends. I still hate water, and its even harder to drink it when I'm at home with crappy tasting ice.
6. Let myself fall during practice. - Completed on Monday! We were doing jumps, so I fell... a lot. I also fell early on working on plow stops. These stops are the bane of my existence right now and when I was playing around to try to make them work for me, I crouched a bit too far back and landed on my ass. Ow.


Goals for this week:
1. Work on side steps and grapevines on my own.
2. Double knee falls - there should be two hits, not one giant one!
3. Work on my crossovers.
4. Learn to stop in a limited amount of space. I need to get over my weird fear of stopping in a pack!

Ankle update

My "weak ankle"? Yeah, it's a broken ankle. XD Whoops. The doctor took some X-rays of both my ankle and my hip (since I walk with one leg towards the side, they wanted to make sure it wasn't something that started up in the hip.) The hip looks fine, but in my ankle, I have a piece of bone that's floating free. The pain that I'm feeling is the muscle getting squished between the two bones, and occasionally the bone hitting against the other one. She thinks I did it when I was younger (it's definitely not new.)

I seriously couldn't be happier.

1. They can fix it non-surgically. I have to start taking Aleve twice a day for a little while to help with pain and inflammation. Next Monday, I start physical therapy. I also have an ankle brace to help with skating or any other form of exercise.

2. It's not all in my head! A part of me was always afraid that I was making up the pain, that nothing's wrong with me and I'm just trying to make an excuse for why I was having such a hard time with skating. This takes a load off.

Fresh Meat Day 2

I feel so much better this recruitment than I did the last. Last night we worked on falls and stops some more, as well as doing side steps and grapevines. I did pretty well on most of it. I still suck at plow stopping, but I t-stop like a boss. I also did knee glides last night! I really struggled with those last time, so it was pretty awesome that I picked it up fairly quickly. I was so shocked when I went down the first time and came right back up that I just stood there for a second like "OMG, I DID IT?!?!" before moving out of the way for the next girl. When I skate this weekend, I'll make sure to work on these a little bit so I don't stand there looking like an idiot afterwards, as well as my plow stops, crossovers and double knee falls.

During warm-ups, I managed some crossovers! This was particularly exciting because I recently adjusted my trucks, so I felt pretty awesome that I could do (crappy) crossovers even with that. However, my ankle still hurt like a son of a bitch during warm-ups, even with me doing ankle strengthening exercises this week. In fact, I worry a little bit that the ankle strengthening exercises made it worse, because I went into practice with a little bit of pain from doing the exercises for a few days. So I finally gave in. I've scheduled an appointment on Monday morning first thing in order to see a sports medicine physician to check it out for me. I really think it's just a weak ankle from what I've seen on the Internet. I had a bad sprain on it when I was a kid, as well as a couple of minor sprains in high school and once doing faire back in 2004. Hopefully they'll just tell me to do some exercises and tape it up when skating until I get the ankle built up.

Practice 1

Seriously, I don't know what's wrong with me. I was doing crossovers at the rink in SC like I actually knew what I was doing, and on a rink I was unfamiliar with that was slicker than I'm comfortable with. Why couldn't I do them last night? We were doing warm-ups and every time we hit a curve, it was like my legs were magically glued to the ground. Itzel said she thought it was just a mental thing. It could have been. I was a little freaked out about it being the first practice and skating with OPCDG again. But not doing crossovers meant instant ankle pain from the weird way that I take turns when I don't man up and do what I need to, so halfway through warm-ups, I was ready to die. I was in pain, I was embarrassed that I couldn't skate after all this time, I hated that so many people were passing me and crossing over like they were born on skates... I'll be honest. As they blew the whistle and we headed over to the beginner's rink, I thought about not coming back on Wednesday. It sucks to work so hard to try to get something basic like that and still have issues.

Once we got back into the beginner's rink, I felt much better though. We did our normal stretching, they spent some time getting birthdays, putting names on helmets, etc. Afterwards, we worked on falls and stops. Falls came right back to me (well, excluding 180s, which I've always sucked at, and baseball slides on the leg I don't fall well on.) Stops were difficult to do because there were so many people in such a small space. I was afraid I was going to trip someone when doing plow stops, particularly since I have ridiculously long legs. I suppose it's great practice for stopping in a pack though, which I really need to work on. I worry so much about my suckiness affecting others (tripping them, or landing on them with all of my weight.) I'm slowly getting over it, but it's a process.

I feel like I'm more in the middle in this recruitment. There are more people my age, more people closer to my size, and more people with approximately my skill level skating. I feel like I actually have a chance this time.

Derby Goals for the week:
1. Do a crossover during warm-ups on Wednesday.
2. Scrounge up the money for an open-skate session.
3. Finish reading "Down and Derby".
4. Do ankle-strengthening exercises every day.
5. Drink at least 3 20 oz. cups of water per day.
6. Let myself fall during practice.

Getting Lower

Shae and I went to Barber Park early this morning to get some skate time in. It was great, really. We didn't push ourselves all that hard but honestly I'm out of practice and she was sore. (Plus, the combo of sucky outdoor wheels and not mouthguard made me nervous as hell.) I love skating with Shae though because every time, she always manages to explain something in a new way to me in order to help me out.

One of my (many many many) problems is that I don't get low enough. I know this. Everyone tells me this. Even worse, I tell myself to get lower, bend my knees more and what happens? I lower my back at my waist and get thrown off-balance. ;lksdjf;sladfj Every. Fucking. Time! Or I feel like I'm getting low and bending my knees and it's pointed out to me that, no, I'm standing up very straight still.

It's the little things that help. Shae mentioned that if I can touch the top of my knee pads, that's the highest I should be at any point in time. I lowered myself in that position and thought "You have got to be fucking kidding me." That's as HIGH as I should be, meaning I should be lower than this if possible? NO WAY. But I tried it! Not perfectly, but I did try to use that as a guideline through much of our skating and... it helped. It helped a lot. I was feeling a little bit better skating, even on the shitty shitty wheels I was skating on. I didn't get my knee falls where I want them to be, but I did work on sticky skating and feel a little better on that. Obviously, I need to work on it more. I will probably always need to work on it more. I'm sure the girls from Team USA are still getting on themselves about getting lower when skating and perfecting certain skills. Hopefully the combination of Barber Park extra practice plus actual recruitment time will finally get my muscles to remember all these moves and get me placed on a team this go around.

(Also, I'm pretty sure if I was doing it right before, I wouldn't be sore from two hours of the lightest skating ever. Definitely need to work on my core, too. I couldn't get up without using my hands. Balls.)

Recruitment: Round 2

Monday was my first night of recruitment round 2. This was just a required informational meeting to fill out paperwork, answer questions, etc. It's almost as nerve-wracking to go through a second round as it is to do the first round. The first time around, you're very optimistic about your chances of making the team. You're absolutely certain that by the end of two months, you'll be passing your minimum skills and by the end of four months, you'll be ready to roll for your first bout. However, by the end of four months, I still couldn't pass my minimum skills. My confidence has taken a beating. At the same time though, I'm starting out probably at the level that many of the girls from last recruitment started at. There's hope!

The intimidation factor from the first recruitment is gone, too. You know, in the very beginning, you're in complete awe of the women already playing. You've been watching them for x amount of time. They're practically gods to you, and now you're trying to be one of them. They're taking their time and talking to you, helping you out, etc. Every time I opened my mouth, I was kicking myself because I was certain everything I said was stupid. I'll admit - I still feel that way at times. It seems weird and wrong to try and be a part of them after looking up to them for so long. But at the same time, everyone was absolutely amazing. The girls I went through recruitment with last time and a few of the more seasoned skaters stopped to say hello, wish me luck and tell me they're glad to see me back.

I'm still very nervous that I'm going to completely blow. I had a dream last night that it was our first practice and I completely forgot how to skate. I spent the entire night on the wall, unable to stand up properly. My legs were all rubbery in a cartoon-ish sort of way, so the only thing keeping me off the floor was my arms clutched on the wall. I think one of the weirder parts of it was that it was definitely the smelly, dirty wall from Universal Skating Center, but it was around the rink at Semoran.

I feel like I'm constantly doing squats to prepare right now, but I'm not getting in the cardio or endurance training that I really need. I'm also not skating nearly enough. Until I pay off my car stuff, I can't afford to go to many open skate sessions, but at the same time, I don't have a good pair of outdoor wheels, so I'm hesitant to go to Barber Park. I might have to suck it up and just go, but really all I want to do is skate on my new wheels. I received some decent birthday money from my granddad (a few months late, thanks to the United States Postal Service) so I bought a set of D-rods at Shell's recommendation (and a little bit of research).

I've been skating on some narrower wheels after reading a bunch of stuff about how it's better for pack skating. However, since stability is an issue, I wanted to try a wider wheel. as;dlfkjasd; THESE ARE A DREAM COME TRUE. I've only skated with them once since receiving them just before Christmas, but I'm in love. I feel like my crossovers are better, my stability is better, my confidence higher and I CAN PLOW STOP. Not quickly, but a hell of a lot better than before where I felt like my wheels were stopping but my ankles weren't. I swore I was going to topple over or break an ankle doing them before. My speed is also better. Dad and I were the same speed last time I went to visit him (which was days before our minimum skills test.) I was definitely faster this time! I could easily lap him a few times. I suspect a part of it is the combination of my awesome new wheels and their freaking amazing new slippy floor (the local rink in SC just re-did the floor. It's all shiny and glittery. I was entertained just looking at it.) I'm hoping that wider wheels were all I needed to get a little more speed going. Apparently some people (particularly bigger girls) find this to be the case. It certainly felt like I didn't need to work as hard to get to a decent speed. But I suppose we'll see come January 16th!