I've been digging on tomato based soups the past week. First I made classic tomato soup. Ate myself sick. Then I made carrot tomato soup with the leftovers. Ate myself sick again. And by the way, organic carrots are sooo much sweeter!
Today I made a turnip green, onion, carrot, celery, garbanzo bean with tomato base soup. The first two were pureed. This one is wonderfully chunky.
I will not eat myself sick today. One of those little tricks I'm learning is to try to eat normal portion sizes. Not easy for me. I was taught to eat large portions of very bland food. Ah the 70's, the era of really bad diet ideas.
SO!!!! I haven't posted in a while. I haven't lost my love for derby or for blogging. Just there has been a lot of some stuff and not so much of others.
To catch you up on "How the Wheels Turn" this has been the past several months.
We have a large ref group. Larger than what most leagues have. Larger than what most small businesses have. So it got a little chaotic trying to stay organized, utilized and on track. We voted on a management structure, appointed positions and started getting shit done. Yeah us!
I am now the interim secretary to the Director, also know as Chief of Stuff. I basically listen to the director, give my two cents, remind him of stuff to do, do stuff, organize stuff and try to be helpful. I am also the Rules Training Coordinator. This means that I teach rules, get other people to teach rules, teach positions, get other people to teach positions, make sure it's all written down and in a timely manner.
About the track. Well we have one. It's big, really big. It's in our warehouse. I've skated on it twice now. We finished on Saturday night at 7pm so we've had all of four days on it.
It's kind of freaky to skate on a banked surface, but also not really freaky at the same time.
Oh by the way did I mention the bout? Yeah. We're having our first on a banked track, roller derby bout!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! On December 4th, Saturday, doors open at 5pm.
I'll be an Outside Pack Ref. Which means I won't be skating. Which I am just fine with for my first bout!
Oh and today I went to open skate. Cavina showed me how to start side surfing. I did like 2 laps with 2-3 second side surf touches, which is freaking awesome!
I'll be posting more and more photos soon, now that derby has, as they say, started rolling again.
So recently we've reorganized our ref group and divided up duties. One of the duties I've taken over is rules training.
I'm not the smartest, most experienced, or most knowledgeable ref we have. And I don't have to be. Creating a curriculum, teaching and organizing is really not about being the best, it's about gathering information to provide to others.
That being said I actually have done a lot of training over the years. I worked in emergency veterinary and did a majority of the training of the front office staff.
The information we needed to understand utilize was for the triage of emergency cases, internal medicine, oncology, radiology and surgery. This involved having a basic knowledge of all of these disciplines and how to ask the right questions and relay the right information.
This is actually fairly complicated as an animal's life is on the line. I learned how to do this confidently and accurately and then taught it to the rest of my staff all the while under stress and chaos of a busy work environment.
So training on rules should be a piece of cake. Well a lot of it is. A lot of it is not particularly complicated. But, like in any discipline, there are the caveats, the tricks, the weird situations and the obscure writing of the WORD rule set.
The rules are pretty well laid out. They are in plain English. But they can be kind of a bitch sometimes to understand.
This is where the experts come in. I don't have to be the best, I just have to bring in the resources of the best. Understand them and see the places where I don't understand.
Last night we had our first rules training with the league. Able and myself presented the basic differences between WORD and WFTDA. We did fairly well only coming up with a few scenarios where we weren't sure the answers. Fortunately I was able to text my local Enforcer and get most of them.
The hard part was not the information. It was being up in front of group, giving my "book report" like a kid back in high school. I'm trying to understand and teach a subject that I am just learning. I'm not going to get anything perfect. And that's ok.
But I couldn't help feeling like I was the unpopular kid at the front with the cool kids laughing and thinking I'm some idiot who shouldn't be up there.
I've been pretty hit or miss with the blogging of late. Our ref group has been going through some restructuring, which has been a bit stressful. But we've finally got things sorted and are making significant progress.
My skating has been taking a back seat to the hubbub and so has reffing. My endurance has tanked and track time minimal, but things are turning around.
The past couple weeks I've been getting on my wheels at least 2 times a week and usually 3-4. I'm lazy, I'll fully admit that, and often the hour before practice is filled with "I don't want to go!". But I'm working out again, staying with the diet, and rolling consistently.
Today I really felt it pay off. I don't know that my speed is in anyway improved, but my skating otherwise sure has. All of sudden I got that lean, the angle you get when gracefully gliding and not pounding through. Yeah graceful, that is exactly how it felt today. I have no idea how it looked, but that's how it felt.
So there is this whole thing when you skate on a rink where you are going in a slow oblong circle. What I was not getting before was how my body needed to be angled. I had finally gotten to the point where I lean a little in, but I did not realize I need to lean, ever so slightly, forward too.
Also I feel more stable and it's because I'm finally thinking about using my leg muscles during cross overs. Instead of them sliding around and my feet catching up, I'm tensing my legs to control it. It feels fucking fantastic!
Oh and I can skate both ways. Now that I have the lean thing down, I can crossover the other direction smoothly and comfortably. Drunken sailor's are kind of my favorite thing!
Wow I am always so blown away at how much the time away doesn't slow me down.
Yes it does effect my endurance, but that is so fleeting. Last Saturday my lungs felt like they would bleed after 10 minutes. My salivary glands were working on over time. It felt awful. But today, I felt great!
We have this really good coach, like shockingly good. Her name is Eva, or at least that's her derby name. She's one of those coaches that watches you and really focuses on what you need.
Honestly she probably knows more about what is going on with me and what is going n with me in derby than anyone else. Not because she's a friend, but because she is a coach who takes the time.
It doesn't take much, but the five minutes she spends let's me tell her and tell myself what I need. We have great coaches, but she is by far the most effective and the most impressive coach for me.
When you have this many ladies who join a sport, a non-professional sport, you need someone who is watching and calling you on it. And she supports you in the plain and simple way you need it.
My goal from last week was to do the warm up worm by end of October. I knew I wouldn't need that long. Just some carbs and a couple of times skating. And it was true. I skated the worm great, did hip and arm whips, which I have never really done before, totally easy by the way. I did half of an endurance drill, which I stopped due to an injured skater. I'm on sports med so I work with the injured skaters.
Basically skating was great. I got a good workout and could have done about ten times more. It really doesn't take much to get back on track.
I started this journey with tennis courts, hallways and all ages open skates.
Well it's rainy fall so the tennis court is out of the question. And the hallway is a little too small these days. But there is always room for the open skate!
Took the kids and hubby to open skate today. We each took a turn with the kids. They made it one lap and were over it. And then David and I took turns skating while the other watched the kids.
I use the time skating with so many children as time to work on speeding and slowing, dodging and skating low and slow. It really is a good workout.
I lasted much longer than I did at last nights practice. I love how each day is a significant improvement at this stage.
If you ever have to take time off from derby due to injury or just life, don't worry. When you come back the catch up time is quick and honestly you may find you are a lot better than when you stopped.
