bruises are the best part of derby

On Sunday night's practice, I fell while doing a leaning drill (trying to push the other person out of bounds). I pushed her out of bounds and landed on her skate when we both fell. There's a beautiful, blue and purple bruise on my outer right thigh, about 1 inch in diameter.
I only have a crappy cell phone pic or else I would post it.
My sister actually was the one who told me that the bruises are the best part of derby. I'm not sure I agree with her, but I can tell you, that I've shown my bruise to a handful of coworkers, most of my teammates, and even the lady who sells cupcakes on the cupcake bus. I apparently have no shame when it comes to pulling down my pants to flash the bruise.
I have other bruises too, on my lower legs, likely from falling on my own skates. I have bruises that I don't recall getting. I also have a tender spot on my shoulder from where we practiced hitting.

On Monday's practice, I was able to use my left leg a lot more to push off on, and actually did my 25 in 5 using both feet. I am still coasting around the corners, but by using both feet, I was able to do 17.5 laps. That is my new personal best, and there are a few factors that I feel went in to achieving it. For one, I was pushing off on both feet which helped a lot because then my right leg wasn't getting tired from doing all the work. Another thing I feel helped was that I was keeping score for the scrimmage the veteran skaters were having, so I was off skates for the previous twenty-ish minutes. I think being warmed up and doing drills for a while, followed by a rest period, helped me to start the 25 in 5 with fresh legs so I didn't get as tired as fast as I normally do. This won't always be able to happen, since we tend to do it near the end of practices, but it is serving to boost my confidence. I'm sure that once I learn to do a crossover, and as I continue to build up my endurance, I will be able to do it and make it look as easy as some of the other girls do.