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Saturday, August 6th, 2005
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i still exist. i just find myself not updating any journals ever anymore, no time!
huge team meeting tomorrow which i am sure will be hours upon hours. lots to coordinate with black top brawl, vegas, etc.
vegas, baby, vegas.
w00t.
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Wednesday, April 27th, 2005
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all that flinging shit around after work to find my derby shirt and we didn't even need them.
tonight KGW News bowed out on filming us, and will be doing so instead on Monday. Apparently they had a special thing to cover and were all too busy. However, a guy from Portland Mercury (a very cute guy, i might add) was there to do what i can only assume is an article as he took lots and lots of notes. so, if anyone sees and article on teh roller girls in the mercury, save it for me. hell, if anyone sees anything about derby in any magazine, paper, etc., also save it for me. :0)
so, tonight was scrimmage practice. there were a few girls out cause they were injured. the few announcements we got were that the seattle bout got cancelled, but we have seats for May's bout for sure and i will be heading up then. instead we're all going to go to an ex-derby girl's fashion show and surprise her, so that's cool. we are signed up to guest bartend at the beerfest, which is awesome as we'll be on skates and getting drunk AND the rat city rollers (seattle's team) will be heading down then to have a bout with us at the beerfest, w00t! so i'm excited about that. drinking + skates = AWESOME.
i think there might have been another announcement, but i promptly forgot.
anyways, we got to do the intertube pull thing again tonight, did some sprinting, etc. i kept up excellently thanks to my wonderful skates. however, the boots are gonna make my toes fall off. goddamn.
we also did some footworks that involved weaving in and out of cups that were positioned on the floor. we did both skates then right only then left only. it was hard at first, but it got better. i found out i am better at balancing on my left than my right, but oh well.
scrimmage we counted off and separated into teams that way instead of going with our normal teams. we got some of hte new girls in there to scrimmage. i got into a three girl pile-up. didn't think quick enough to hop over, but i did manage not to hurt hte girl who fell in front of me. in fact, i think she only got hurt from the falling down - it knocked the wind out of her. there are some nights i feel totally off in scrimmage and some nights that i can feel i'm doing well. tonight was a mix. a few of the scrimmages i think i did an excellent job at blocking and helping out our jammer and a few others i was thinking "god, that was messy and i didn't do anything helpful, geh". those ones are always frustrating.
next update will probably be sunday...skating at the blacktop and jungle honey meeting afterwards. whee :0)
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tonight's practice was super effective. it was conditioning practice (obviously not scrimmage, as we did no scrimmaging) and we got to work on quite a few basics so we were able to incorporate the new girls in on the drills. i jammed my feet into the two small skates, but will be heading to oak's park (maybe on Sunday) to try on other sizes and see if I can get them to fit correctly. i have noticed i do much better in men's sizes cause they are usually girl's half sizes, which is where i fit in. plus they all come in black, which is most excellent.
we did a lot of jumping, falling, turning around, running on stoppers, skating backwards. we did some skating in packs, jamming, flinging...that was mainly this new drill that i think everyone loved and wants to do more. i adore being able to keep up with everyone without getting tired, even if my feet do hurt from it. its such an amazing feeling. though i do feel like i'm getting even less of a workout than i was with teh wheels that require lots of effort to roll.
saturday is a seattle bout that a lot of us girls are going to. i found a ride with a couple of the girls and jeffrey, all of which i could stand to get to know more. i think it'll be a good group heading up there and coming back down, as we are the few who want to return the same night and not have to stay in the hotel room for an extra $10. The bout should be pretty sweet..i'm really looking forward to it and i'm sure i'll have lots to tell.
other than that, new recruit night was last night and i drug suzy along, who was an excellent sport. it was pretty laid back. we did some switching and we also got to take over hte rink for a few minutes and show them all what a scrimmage was, so that was beneficial and they got kim's speel. I think it was good for a lot of the girls, evne those who have come to practice a few times, cause the pace of practice is so quick that most of the girls haven't had a chance to just go over hte basics about roller derby. today i skated with a girl during the switching drill who has been there for at least hte last 3 or 4 practices, but hasn't gotten to do a switch yet, so i'm glad i convinced her ot come in and be my partner, cause she finally got a chance to see what that is like, what it involves, i got to teach her that you want ot switch counter-clockwise (so the person on the right side always goes in front and the person on the left goes behind) and that its best to grab wrists, as hands aren't as solid. i still remember hte first time i had to do a switching drill at the bowling alley garage. i also remember the first time i got flung and wasn't able to grab on and wound up running into a wall. :0) luckily when i joined up the girls were all still going through basics, but there's a lot to catch up on now for newbies. all of them are doing excellent though, and it really helps that we now have one roller girl strictly devoted to teaching the new girls and we also have been incorporating them a lot. the team camraderie has gotten really amazing, and almost everyone knows everyone else's names.
that is all. i will have more wednesday or saturday.
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okay kids, i need help. i got my name, now i need my number.
here are my top choices:
44 (duh)
66 (enough of the satanism in there that i thought it would look well with black sabbatha across the top of it)
42 (my lovely little hitchiker's reference... :0)
any other numbers you guys think should be considered? which one do you like best?
and the first person to say that they think it should be 69 will be shot. after being slowly tortured.
that is all :0D
oh, and sorry for all those who have this showing up twice on their friends lists...i figured its derby related and didn't know how many people knew of this lj. thanks kids!
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Wednesday, April 13th, 2005
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i'm starting to grow accustomed to the cracking noise my tailbone makes when i fall on it. however, it was a total fluke that i fell on it and all my falls after that one were superb (maybe cause i was trying to not fall on my tailbone again and was purposefully avoiding that area of my body)...
Channel 12 news, Portland Monthly and the LA Derby Doll known as Black Dahlia (who is doing a magazine on roller derby) were all there tonight for pictures and filmage and the like. it was more of a wasted practice than i was expecting, but we still got quite a few good drills in AND got to scrimmage on a night that wasn't our scrimmage night. our team is still doing excellently. we're really starting to come together i think. i wish i was a decent jammer, cause i really don't mind being the pivot at all, but there are times, according to Texas rules, that the pivot can BECOME the jammer, kind of a switch off if the jammer is in a bad position, and jamming i cannot do. bleh.
maybe when my skates don't suck, but most definitely not NOW. hrmph. i heard mention that we will be able to order new skates soon.
and i think i mentioned a lot of this same stuff in my last post. um. new derby girls have their own personal coach to go to. so they're getting help with the basics while the rest of us are doing other things AND they've been incorporating the new girls into drills too. which i think is great. i remember when i first started up and it is really intimidating to see that many girls, skating fast, knowing what they're doing, falling on their asses, taking each other out and thinking "can i really do this? will i ever be even remotely as good as them?!"
i got a new rose city rollers shirt tonight and will be bringing in a t-shirt and either tank top or hooded sweatshirt to get the cute little rose city rollers girly logo. that one is the best. 4 shirts might be a lot, but they'd be different styles and the one i have now, i don't like. it shrank in teh wash and its plain. and boring. AND WHITE. boo. so the logo might be getting cut off and pinned to something instead. yes yes. waste of $10, but the silk screen shirts will only cost me $3 a piece, so i say its a decent trade.
we invited the rest of RCR along to our team practice on Sunday since apparently there was some animosity towards us practicing extra time. it'll probably get a bit crowded if its rainy, but i think it'll be fun to get to know more of the girls.
that is all. good night.
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Sunday - we found a new place to practice. a much bigger blacktop than the one we have been using, so i believe we will be meeting there from now on. Unfortunately, when its raining, the covered part gets little trails of water through it, so it makes for a smallish area to skate in, but it worked out pretty well. some nice boys who were working on kickboxing type things moved over so we could share :0) we worked a lot on passing mostly and some keeping pace. my back cramped up so bad i couldn't stand, since our circles were pretty tight and that annoys me like no other. i think i need to drink more water and i'm going to figure out what else will help fix that. new skates maybe so its not so hard to roll. We had a league meeting after practice (non-mandatory) to determine the layout for practices (scrimmaging practices on monday and conditioning practices on Wednesdays and then the drills divided among those).
Monday - scrimmage practice! scrimmage practice is totally my favorite. we incorporated the new girls and got to skate outside of our divided teams, which was actually rather challenging because first off, you know how people from your team skate/jam/block, etc. and also because you had to remember taht they WEREN'T ON YOUR TEAM THIS TIME. ha ha. luckily we all had jerseys. We did quite a few drills before hand, including hte phone intertube drill where we have intertube (deflated) tied around our waists and we drag anotehr person behind us. we did 30 laps of those and they were tough. then we did scrimmaging and found out that we now have a sponsor! we get to order wheels and bearings soon and (drumroll please) NEW SKATES! eep, i'm so excited. i have my skates and can't wait to get some good ones. we also can order gear and the like. i need some new knee pads, but i think the rest of my gear is alright. Channel 12 news will be at Wednesdays practice to take some footage of us and we have a lady from the LA Derby Dolls headed up (Black Dahlia) to do a magazine article on us. I have a feeling lots of media coverage is gonna start up since we're seriously in search of a new home and also recruiting (Suzy - if you read this I need to talk to you!!)
Anyways, that's all for tonight. i gotta shower and do some research on how to help improve my back.
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Wednesday, April 6th, 2005
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mission accomplished. i couldn't have hoped for a better icon. and i have Naked on Roller Skates as a backup.
Also, note to Manda - when i was searching i found a picture of a kermit stuffed animal in roller skates!! hee hee.
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practice WAS endurance tonight and so physically exhausting. i don't really have anything to update on it cause the drills were so back to back that i didn't have time to concentrate on what we were doing. i know we must have skated at least 150 laps or so. doing different things, but still. we did 50 laps (with sprint laps increasing the more we did) 25 one way, 20 or so one way, 20 again another way, etc. etc. etc. there actually was a point when i thought i would puke. not a good sign. and also, wearing a helmet SUCKS. it makes one really much hotter than NOT wearing a helmet does. but i guess it IS a necessity. and now rather mandatory. we unwound with yoga, which some of the girls are boycotting. i really don't blame them. we never got to decide on the yoganess. but i rather like it. its nice to stretch after practice.
www.rosecityrollers.com or www.rose-city-rollers.com
we're up and running now. YIPPEEE.
i realize i need an icon for this. i shall find one shortly. i'm thinking a lovely little pinup rollergirl. yes oh yes i am...
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okay, so i'm a week's worth of practices behind in updating. actually, it should technically be two week's worth, but i was sick for a week, so that week doesn't count.
i've been on a hunt for new skates, but to no avail. i can order some online, though, which might be what i will end up doing. new ones from target.com for $40. granted, shipping will add at least another $15 or so on that, but i need SOMETHING.
tonight was the night of full gear. i now have a helmet. and a mouthguard, too, but i just bought that this evening.
we warmed up a lot this evening, then we went into drills. we skated for 20 laps just using one leg to push (switched legs after ten). that was exhausting and i was slow. it was harder than i figured it would be and i couldn't seem to get my rhythm down correctly, but i'm going to start working out more in my non-practice time to build my legs and my endurance.
then we partnered up and worked on blocking. awesome new technique that i got use out of this evening. Lenny was really excited when he saw people using it during scrimmaging. its kinda funny, but since he has kind of adopted our team under his wing, we seemed to be the only ones actually using his methods. shocking, as his methods managed to make our team win EVERY SCRIMMAGE. hee hee.
the great thing is, we have been pretty much the underdog team. the other teams have girls who have been doing this stuff longer, have better skates, are on teh league board of directors, i.e. major players. they comment a lot about our team, and how our girls don't make it to practice (we seriously have a core of only about 6-7 of us who are there consistently) and we have always wanted to pretty much show them that we're just as good, if not surpass.
tonight was our golden night as far as that goes. we have been practicing one extra practice a week, learning techniques from Lenny, getting together in our free time to work out, all sorts of stuff. Also, as far as scrimmaging has been going, with only about 5-6 players around, its not possible to sub people out when we scrimmage during practice. Therefore, we have been building up endurance and techniques like mad and tonight was the first night we saw it pay off. We had ten girls there, which meant we were able to fully sub out our team each scrimmage and we did WICKED great. oh my god.
i got one good fling and some really effective blocks in, only landed smack on my tailbone once (but took the other team's jammer down with me, so it was worth it) and the rest of the girls were AMAZING. christel did a great job jamming, as did lisa (not their usual positions, but i know christel really wants to start jamming and i can tell now that she will be great at it). marcie is our fucking powerhouse, she can block like no other and really gets in the way of the other team. she went down quite a bit, but she took girls down too. the rest of the girls did great too...i can't even think cause my brain is starting to turn to mush at this point and my ass is hurting.
next update will be Wednesday....i think Wed. are our endurance practices...ugh.
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Wednesday, March 16th, 2005
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found out that a girl who came Monday (one of the newbies) broke her wrist in two places that night.
poor kid.
tonight we did a lot of scrimmaging. jeffrey told us to be less lethal. unfortunately i somehow accidentally became more lethal and must have taken out like 5 girls this evening, including pushing one girl into another, making them both fall down, one of which fell down straight on the other girl's ankle and it made a popping sound. i felt SO AWFUL. no idea if its broken or sprained yet. that pretty much killed the scrimmaging, but i got told i did a good block and also learned how to be a good pivot, so that worked out well.
after that elliott ran us through some drills. we paired up and skated around, holding hands and had jammers break through. think red rover in a line :0) ha ha.
that was rather boring though. so then we got to free skate. and i worked on turning and skating backwards, crossovers (both ways - found out they come in QUITE handy during scrimmaging and i had been doing them most of the evening anyways) and worked on crossovers whilst running around corners. and promptly fell and broke my ass. again. *shakes head*
next update will be sunday - we have a mandatory meeting and a family league skate night. who wants to be in my family? :0D
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tonight i tried to get a good warmup in so my back won't go out. i can tell it wants to. which is frustrating to say the least.
the first drill we did was the same one that our team did at practice last night - the 50-lap drill. ugh, what a way to start! for some reason we partnered up for it, but there really was no point in doing so. its very much an individual thing. the next thing we did was races with your partner, though, so that at least made sense.
next we did some drills for the newbies. by the by, anybody who reads this and knows girls who would want to skate, tell them they should come out to 10000 NE 33rd in Portland. its the old armory. Its off Marine Drive. We need some new recruits. Mondays and Wednesdays, 7 - 9 or you can always come to our specific team practice - Sundays at 7:30 at 24th and Couch. its at the blacktop of this school.
anyways, we did the drills I always find the funnest. Working on jumps, skating backwards, falls, etc. usually some random combination of those and we do them in lines. they're definitely the ones i like the best.
then we kind of did paces with the partner - speed skating so that people could get their lap time down. i have no idea what mine and Dana's laptime was. seriously we were just trying to not get run over since we both have the nasty back cramp going on.
Next we got to do FREE YOGA from a yoga instructer named Caroline. A half hour worth of some good stretches and i asked her afterward about some that are good for the back as well. hopefully they'll help. she might come back more on a tip-basis, which I think is an EXCELLENT idea. our own personal team yoga instructor! ha!
i tried on some skates that lisa bought that were her roommates (who was selling them for $50). Unfortunately one skate was too small, but they skated awesomely. i wish they had fit right.
and then after practice we got to partake in a table of free bread that the armory guys had and that the guy who was closing up said we could thieve. EXCELLENT.
but now i gotta take care of my blister again. don't ever try liquid new skin. hurts like a bitch. i might see if i can find some of hte gel pads that that brand has though...one of the girls was telling me about it.
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Tonight we had a brief team meeting and took a team photo for specifically our team only. we all wore black bottoms and our RCR shirts.
then we got into partners and worked on bump/blocking. we learned that Marci is lethal even in practice, which is awesome.
next drill was skating around in circles....basically continuous crossovers and we went in shifts of crouching as low as we can and then we would get a break and be able to stand up. my back has been hurting something awful lately. so the breaks were nice.
next we did 50 laps. i think this was the last thing really that we did as far as drills go. It consists of pacing 9 laps, sprinting 1, pacing 8, sprinting 2, pacing 7, sprinting 3, and so on till its 5/5. i SUCK at sprinting. really, really awful. plus my back has been getting tired and cramped, so not much i could do about that.
afterward lenny showed us a couple exercises, one to build up leg muscles and the other to build up ankle muscles for balance.
the end :0)
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Wednesday, March 9th, 2005
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well, i promised you all the life of a derby girl, and i'm delivering, WITH PICTURES!
So, practice tonight out at the armory from 7 to 9. Quite a few new ladies showed up and i loaned one of them my newest skates, as the alignment is slightly off on them and they will need some adjusting... but i prewarned her and they were alright to skate on for first practice, i was just a little frightened of trying them for scrimmage.
( new skates )
i put on my old tried and true, which are horribly broken (plastic face plate is split in half right before my front wheels. i did that in practice sunday), but okay to skate on as long as i don't use my stoppers. my new skates (once adjusted) are going to be even better cause those wheels roll like no other. after having them on, i couldn't even get my old ones rolling until i remembered i have to use a lot more force.
we started with a drill where we push each other around the track. then we went on to stretching, situps, pushups. my wrist is still too fucked to do pushups, but the rest were fine. we did a partner drill after that where we got into two rows and worked on switching (both single and double. involves basically swinging your partner around until you're either in their spot or back in your own if its doubles). then we got into single row lines by groups and started skating in lines, working on staying low around the corners and keeping our hands behind our backs (helps one focus on balance). at this point my back started cramping (i really think its the fact my skates are broken...didn't have this problem before that) and i bowed out about a minute and a half early to stretch some more and then hopped back in for the last 30 seconds.
next came blocking drills. these were fun. we got into groups of three. person in the middle would work on bumping the two on the outer edge (basically blocking them, but also trying to knock them on their ass). girls on the outside would work on basically holding their own and not falling. i was teamed up with my team captain (megan) and one of the new girls. and holy shit can that new girl block. she knocked me on my ass TWICE, felt like she was going to dislocate my shoulder, and knocked megan on her ass once. the deflection alone from being in the middle and blocking her knocked me into blocking megan and almost knocked megan on her ass. this girl is SOOO on our team. i was incredibly impressed by the amount of power she has. after that excellent (albeit slightlly paintful) drill, each team put on jerseys and we scrimmaged.
Scrimmaging is exactly what our bouts will be like. Two teams, five girls each, go out on track. we skate around for two minutes per round, four rounds total, and see who ends up with teh most points. our team sat out first round while the other two teams went head to head and i would say there were about 20 wrecks in those 8 minutes. by the time it was our turn to be up i had butterflies in my tummy and didn't know what to do, as i had never had them before a scrimmage. ever. once we got rolling though, you tend to forget. our team discussed procedures and methods briefly and then went up against the Rollers, as we lovingly refer to them. it took us the first loop after the jammer started going to get down the procedure. the blockers on their team were dead-set on knocking out our team's blockers, but didn't really focus on our jammer much. of course, this made it hard for us to focus on THEIR jammer, as they were trying to send us flying. i got knocked down only once (amazingly) and started to figure out the best methods. once our jammer started to come around, i would just start running into people to throw them off enough to clear a path. usually two girls at once. this worked pretty well. that and hitting their own blockers into the jammer also worked. not to mention that it kinda makes me giggle. there's nothing like someone's own team member taking out their jammer. :0D end of two minutes up and we huddled with our other two team members (one out due to injury and one out due to broken skates) who were watching to help figure out what we could do better. by the third round we had it down (though i was having trouble skating due to my huge blister which suddenly appeared), but the jam was called off. we were running out of time at this point anyways, so that pretty much ended the evening. we skated one cool down lap and then took off our skates and went home.
( here ) is my lovely blister. grand length is about 2.5 inches and its oozing like mad, so i gotta take care of it.
next update: Sunday
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black_sabbatha's journal