Monday, May 9, 2011

Derby tally

We're in week 13 of 16 of fresh meat.  Three more weeks to go.  It seem like an appropriate time to look back and see how it's been going...

At the beginning I literally couldn't carry on a conversation while on my skates without falling over. Now you can hit me, bump skates with me, I can skate on one foot while turning to look behind me (well, one leg anyway), I can jump and turn in a circle, I can jump over three obstacles in a row (!) and almost almost almost do 25 laps in 5 minutes.  I wouldn't call myself good by any stretch but when I saw the Hamilton team play on Saturday I thought maybe we were almost as good as them (OK, they got their asses kicked deservedly, but still...).

I do hurt myself fairly regularly.  I don't know if everyone else does this.  I think I'm just old and heal slowly.

  • Week one I tore my medial cruciate ligament (MCL).  That was bad.  It still hurts but it's getting better.  
  • The week I had the flu I fell on my ass several times in the same place but didn't do any serious injury, however I did something to my rib cage which lasted several weeks.  When I ran my ribs would go into spasm so I couldn't breathe.  That was fun.  
  • The week we did whips I strained my tricept on the arm I broke since it apparently has no strength at all.  
  • The week we had Aston Martini and her gang my leg slipped while plow stopping and I did something somewhat major to the muscles at the back of my *other* knee, the right one.  This hurts and cramps up when I run which is a total pain in the arse, but if I stop to stretch it it seems to go away.  I thought this was minor but it's been a month or so and it's still bugging me.  
  • This week I strained something in my upper thigh - not my regular quad, but something higher up so I can't lift my leg higher than parallel to the floor. It doesn't hurt to run though.

I gotta tell you, none of these has caused me to miss a week of practice.  Call me stupid, but I figure if it doesn't actually hurt, I can work through it.  I don't want to miss a minute of track time.

Three weeks to go.  The sun is shining.  Time to master the stuff I can't do:

  • Plow stops.
  • Skating on one leg.
  • Weaving through cones on one leg.
  • Fast starts

Get on with it.  There's lots of time to be in a wheelchair when you flunk out of derby.

1 comment:

GUNTer said...

agreed, or when you are dead.
mighty impressed you can jump an obstacle!!!!!