wild west showdown!

Since I couldn't make it back across the state this weekend for the big wild west showdown in bremerton, I'm watching the live bouts online. www.derbynewsnetwork.com I definitely am envious of these girls. They're amazing! I'm super eager to get to that level. Hopefully some day I will be! These girls ROCK. Plus, watching the bouts, you can see a few big girls in there! YAY! It's all so inspirational to keep busting my ass (hopefully not literally again) and getting better! Did not go to practice this morning since it still hurts to walk, i don't want to know what might happen if i fell again just yet. Next week I'll go for sure even if it doesn't feel 100%. I definitely am eager to get better, this can also be my downfall.

healing

Still waiting for my butt to heal. I went to the doctor on monday, and he said that I could get X-Rays done but it's not worth it, since there's nothing they could do if it were broken. I don't think I actually broke my tailbone, since it's been feeling gradually better. I thought it was feeling a lot better yesterday until my geology lab, when we had to walk around campus looking at the marble and such on buildings. After that, I was hurting pretty bad, Fortunately, this weekend many of the girls will be in bremerton at the big wild west showdown, so there isn't a real practice saturday anyway. I had been planning on still going and skating with the girls that are still here, but I think I'm going to just take it easy this week. Hopefully the following week I'll be well enough to get back on the skates! I did make a little handout flyer, haven't heard much back about it, so I don't know if they really like it or not, so i'll just post my current draft!

the pain!

first real practice on skates yesterday. It was very unnerving. Skating is much much harder than some of the girls make it look. I knew it was going to be hard, and that I was going to be sore. But I also thought I could handle it perfectly fine. I tried so hard on saturday, but I still have to stop and take a break, and after trying again, I had to quit a bit early. I felt like a failure, but I was in pain! I fell right on my butt really hard, and it still hurts to sit, stand up, walk around much, all of that. I think I bruised my tail bone pretty good. On top of that, my legs got really shaky and hurt so bad by the time I quit. It's embarrassing to not be able to keep up. I'm not done yet, I'm so determined to do this, I'm going to bust my ass to get better. I just have to get over being embarrassed and ashamed in the mean time. It's hard to express how much I'm really trying when I'm sitting on the bench. At the same time, I want to WANT to come back and keep working, and that means stopping when I feel like I am going to die. I will be back at the next practice, and I will continue to work until it hurts. I just need patience. I really wish there was someone else newer who sucked as much as I do, so I wasn't alone.

In other non-skate related news, hung out with friends last night, went to Kelli's boyfriend's place and played poker for the first time. We played with chips, no money, and I beat them all! BWAHAHAHA!

My skates!

My skates finally came!!!! yay!!! They fit pretty good, and i've tried skating around my apartment a little. i'm VERY shaking on my hard floor, carpet is super easy! hahaha. Right now I'm super excited to get better at it, a bit scared about the process of getting good at skating, but hopefully i'll get a hang of it soon! Thinking of going to the rec one to go practice a bit before saturday, but I don't want to be too sore when saturday comes! It'll be nice if we get the warehouse so we can have more practices!!

woo

went to the warehouse tonight for practice. I just watched, since my skates aren't here (they better be here tomorrow!) It's freaking COLD. It'll be better once I'm actually moving though. After we packed in a car and waited in the parking lot for one of the girls' husband to come bring her keys to the car. That was pretty fun. I'm just so freaking eager to skate and to get better at skating! So my skates are supposed to come tomorrow, I'm gone most of the day, so I don't know if UPS will leave them at my door. I want them to, I'm not really concerned about it getting stolen or anything. So come on skates! get here fast!

Happy V-Day

whoah man

So my legs are super sore tonight, and i didn't even skate half the time! All my gear came except for the skates. I've been told they should be here by tuesday. I squeezed into 2 sizes too small skates, OUCH! The floor excercises were really hard. Planks are going to kill me, I definitely need to try to do plank position every day just while watching tv or something. Also need to keep up crunches and leg lifts if nothing else.

Other than that, not feeling too good tonight. I was hoping to go help with sewing soap, but I fell asleep, so hard that my alarm didn't even wake me up. Then I was still so tired, I just went back to sleep and slept for a couple more hours. Woke up with my legs hurting. So i guess it's a good sign that I at least worked hard enough to be sore today! but it definitely makes me scared for doing a full workout. But then I will have my own skates that will fit, so maybe that will help. We ordered shirts, so I'm excited for that!

I definitely need to be more patient, I don't tend to like not being good at something right away, and this is definitely something that will take a lot of work before I am any good. Just need to hang in there and work hard and keep my eye on the future!

FOR THE RECORD! yes... I did make my blogspot adress thing to say roller girl, but I know I'm not yet! That's more of a hopeful thinking, that one day I'll get the title, for now I'm just a wannabe! Definitely don't want to step on any toes, so all you real rollergirls out there, I don't mean to offend!

Poster!

I also made a poster for Rolling Hills for my photoshop class. The photoshop class was pretty lame, but I did learn how to make a new brush design, so that was pretty cool I suppose. Since the "final project" (it was only a week long class, so not much of a big final project) I was supposed to make a poster promoting something. I thought about doing my photography (http://www.racheljphotos.com) but decided to do it on derby instead. Here is the final product!

It all begins

Jumping back into the blogging world after failing quite a few times, since I tend to get bored fairly quickly so we'll see how this goes.

In the last couple years I've gotten a big interest in roller derby. Unfortuantely while at home, I never took the

opportunity to go to a bout, we have some big derby teams back home, but I just never did it. I think I was just too scared to face the reality of it, it was better as a fantasy in my head. Well, after coming back to school, I found out there's a roller derby team forming right here in the middle of nowhere. I was excited, so once I found out, I sent them an e-mail and asked about how to join up! Well they told me to just come on saturday, and seeing as I don't have a car out here, I found one of the girls to give me a ride. I have huge feet (size 11 women's) so I wasn't sure about how available skates for me to borrow would be. Sure enough I went saturday and there wasn't anything I could borrow. I did attempt to squeeze my feet into some size 9's, but that failed pretty badly. So after some convincing, my parents decided to loan me the money to get my own gear. So now it's all ordered and I'm just waiting for it to come! Hopefully I will get it in time to skate saturday!

Now for the fat part. I'm a size 22. Most roller derby girls i've seen are very in shape, and are seen as quite the sex symbol. Watching practice I realized how ridiculously hard roller derby will be for me. But right now I'm keeping positive and really looking forward to giving it a try. Here I'll share my wonderful (and i'm guessing painful) adventures with the Rolling Hills Derby Dames!

*picture is from a 2008 roller derby calendar. Photographer Tony Pearce.