Photoshoot at Scruffy's and Sunday Skating :)

Saturday was our first proper photoshoot at Scruffy Murphy’s. It was great to get together outside practice and posing with our skates was too much fun. At one point we all ventured out into the freezing Birmingham afternoon to get a group shot under the Scruffy’s sign…to the delight of several busfuls of people and a group of guys with camera phones!

We got some excellent shots :) these are just some of them













Then the day after Eve L. Hart made her usual hour-long trawl over to mine to pick me up for practice. It turns out that my mowhawk stops (which I thought I’d almost perfected at our midweek practice a few weeks back) weren’t entirely fluke, but I do need to do a lot of work before they’re anywhere near perfected. As with everything, confidence is the key to pulling it off, and while you have the slightest doubt that you’re not going to turn, and the smallest fear that you’re going to end up on you’re ass, you won’t turn and you will fall on your ass. Just like I did!

Practice rocked though, even if we did get punished for taking ages to kit up. After giving us a stern talking to, Ouija Broad made the stragglers (me included) pull a minute-long plank. God it hurt…but it’s a great way to encourage us to kit up faster in future. I might be able to hold a plank for ages, but there’s no way I’m going to do it if I don’t have to! To warm up we did a five minute speed skate, aiming to get over 20 laps. I’m going to take my clicker with me next time because it’s far too damn hard to skate your fastest, dodging everyone else, pointing out renegade cones AND counting your laps at the same time. I thought I’d only done 25 but Rollin’ Robin had counted 28 and I’d stayed with her the whole time…and I trust her attention span and judgement much better than I trust my own!

We also worked on whips and stealing an assist from your unsuspecting teammates. I'm not too steady on my feet, so sometimes I can give really effective whips, and other times I fall on my bum pulling people to their doom with me. I can use all the practice I can get, but I think that taking your own whip by swinging off the hips and clothes of the girls on your team is much more effective and far more reliable! It might sometimes come as a shock to have your speed suddenly stolen as your jammer wrecks her way through the pack, but I find that at the moment the least intervention I have the better!

Knee falls are another important derby skill, and we spent time working on this too. I always find that it's really easy to do a left knee fall, but my right knee doesn't seem so willing to do its job. I want to fall, I think about the fall, but I just don't pull it off without falling into a dodgy powerslide. I think it's down to my left thigh being abysmally weak compared to my right...with a little work I should be able to pull off a more successful fall. I've already got a lot better at popping straight back up from a left fall without my leg muscles giving out on me...I've got the bouncy madness of aerobics to thank for that! Now I just need to get my left leg as strong and maybe it'll obey me! ha ha

I’m slowly getting better at backwards skating too. It’s really hard to get your head (and your feet) round it, especially when you’re doing it as part of a relay race! It was amazing to see everyone having a go, even our newbies and our first-time skater! It feels totally alien to be rolling backwards though, I just don't get how you're meant to do it! It's SO hard! It’s a confidence thing again, and it’s only down to the fact that I think I can’t do it that I’m falling on my face because I can’t get my backwards-balance! I can’t wait for the weather to warm up more so I can start getting some more practice in outdoors…once a week is not enough skating time…