Highs and Lows

Sunday night's practice was a roller coaster of sorts.
It started off as always, with a few warm up laps, during which I was actually able to lift up my left foot a couple of times. I still haven't figured out how to push off with my left foot, but just being able to lift it up was great, even if it was only for a couple of seconds at a time.
One of the drills we did was leaning against another skater. I partnered up with one of the veteran skaters who I am in awe of. She is my derby idol. She makes it all look so easy, but she is super nice and helpful too. Anyway, so we were shoulder to shoulder, leaning against each other, skating around the track. The purpose of this is to try to direct the other person. If you were in a pack situation, you would want to have the advantage. A couple of times I actually tried to push my partner out of bounds, and succeeded! It was awesome.
However, on one of those pushes, our skates sort of collided and my toe stop ended up falling out. When I was trying to put it back in, I discovered that the part it screws into was broken. I ended up having to unlace my skate to take my toe guard off so it wouldn't be flapping all over the place, and then I rejoined the group.
The rest of practice was ok. We did some whips which are always fun, even tho I fell a couple times because I was going so fast. We did the dreaded 25 in 5 which felt even harder tonight and I wasn't able to beat my best but I kept going.
After that, it was pretty much the end of practice, but the coach wanted us all to do a few drills to work on stance. the first was the grapevine (where you cross your leg in front of you on one step and then behind you on the next step). The next was galloping and the last was galloping while getting your feet to touch in the middle. We were to do each drill across the rink and back again.
Well, I never got to either of the galloping drills because I was still on my way across the rink with the grapevines by the time everyone else finished. Two of the girls came over to see me and I ended up having a breakdown. I was just getting so frustrated. They both said they would stay with me and finish my grapevines with me. It was really awesome to have their support.

I know there are going to be more times like this, where I feel so frustrated, but if there is anywhere to have those feelings, derby is definitely the place. The girls are all so supportive. They've all been there before. Getting your body to do some of the things we have to do would be hard enough to do off skates!

I'm also really thankful to have one of my fellow fresh meat girls be super supportive. She comes to derby from a hockey background, and I can tell she is going to be an awesome jammer one day. I drive her in to practice on Sundays and tonight on our way home, she reminded me how far I've come already. She also mentioned that I work harder than anyone else.
 I have to keep reminding myself that 6 weeks ago I had never been on skates. my first night on a roller rink I was on my ass more than on my feet. 3 weeks ago I wasn't able to get up without using my hands. now I can. I'm really glad I'm keeping this blog as documentation of my journey. Hopefully it will help out some other new skater some day.