Fresh Meat: Week Four

So this week's Fresh Meat post is a little late.  I have had one of those weeks all week and by the time I got home yesterday all I wanted to do was sit on the couch and watch The Walking Dead. I am trying to catch up on Season 3 before Season 4 starts and each episode leaves me just a little more addicted.  I love that show...but back to the topic at hand.  This week I took a Berocca before I left work to go to varsity which meant that by the time I got to derby, I had a lot more energy than I usually do.  For those of you who don't know, on a Thursday I go from work to my two hour lecture and then all the way back to Hillcrest for practice.  It's all worth it but it makes for a very long day.  Anyway, the extra energy helped a lot because I wasn't nearly as pooped by the end of practice as I usually am!

My skates when they were still shiny and new...

After doing several warm-up laps around the track we practiced some more t-stops and plow stops.  There is no better motivation to stop before the line that the threat of crunches or jumping jacks in skates to make you want to stop!  Unfortunately I was slightly over cautious which earned me the same punishment as failing stop...oh well...at least it was crunches.

Next it was backwards skating which is much easier than it sounds.  We paired up and took turns pushing each other backwards and trusting our partners to stop us before the line.  The hardest part was keeping in a straight line but luckily we found a line on the floor to follow.

Thursday night was also the first night we skated in a proper pack.  We broke up into two teams of nine or ten and then skated slowly around the track as close to our team mates as possible...basically like a big blob.  When our coach called out touch, we had to be close enough to reach out and touch two people without moving.  When she called out touch again, we had to have moved around enough so that we could touch two different people.  It's one way to get to know the other skaters and resulted in a fair amount of laughter.  I must admit that our amoeba did super well...we kept together, kept our derby stance and managed to work out a system to move each other around.  It was an excellent exercise in team work.

We ended of the evening with more stopping practice and the surprising news that we had basically been examined that evening and that we had checked the first box in our fresh meat training....yay!  Next week we are starting some new skills and I am probably more excited than necessary:)