Week 2: 11th August 2011
I returned for my second week of roller derby training on a wet August evening. Outside, the weather was distinctly moist. I felt this would accurately match the conditions INSIDE the building too, where the forecast was for light moisture early on, becoming heavy later, with widespread showers. (Of sweat, that is. Just in case you didn’t read last week’s blog and missed the analogy there).
My giant skate woes were vanquished this week by the excellent Sniper Viper of the Newcastle Roller Girls who arrived brandishing a spare pair of disco boots which totally fit! Thanks to that lady! Unfortunately however, the curse of the giant gear didn’t end there, as this week I ended up with a helmet so big it looked as though it may have been formed from a cast of an elephant skull. It was approximately the size of a waste paper basket and it rattled around on my apparently tiny head like a box on the head of a small child pretending to be a robot. No matter, the improved ventilation was excellent news for the sweat situation. Although the seeing situation was somewhat hampered what with all the helmet slippage. These things are sent to try us!
Our coach for session two was the beguilingly named Man-Shaped Dog, one of the team’s NSO’s and captain of the newly-formed Merby team ‘Tyne and Fear’ (that’s men’s roller derby for those of you wondering. It is most certainly NOT a dodgy-sounding hairpiece which is, for some reason, what it brings to mind for me. Don’t ask). He had a skills session in store for us which included a variety of extremely handy techniques such as turning, stopping, and going round corners quickly. All very useful stuff, of course. Unfortunately with my lack of experience I was lagging behind, still on the week 1 basics which mainly included ‘staying upright and moving forwards’. But I was getting better at these, at least; I wanted to shout it from the rooftops: ‘look at me! I can skate! I am king of the world!’ but sadly no-one really seemed interested in my new-found skill and I felt something of the frustration of a two-year child trying to get around in a room full of assuredly mobile five-year olds all going about their business on just their two feet without the need for hands OR knees.
Turning was first on the list. ‘We’re going to skate up to the cone and do a 180 degree turn,’ our confident coach assured us. Oh ARE we now?! Is that what you think? I think I can accurately predict the outcome of this particular exercise. And as if by magic, I reached the cone, and managed ooh I don’t know, perhaps 36 degree’s worth of vague left-ward glide before I let myself drift to a halt and shuffled my skate-laden feet round the remaining 144 degrees. Yes, of course we are. I concluded that perhaps turning wasn’t my forte and left it at that.
Next up was stopping. Personally, I felt this possibly would have been better placed as the very first thing we learnt, as it’s sort of integral to the process of not embedding one’s face in walls/the floor/other people’s backs. But hey, what do I know. We learnt two different ways of stopping, one of which involved superhuman outer thigh muscles and the other which involved dragging your wheels along the floor behind you making all kinds of horrendous floor scrapey noises. I wasn’t very good at either of them. Never mind, in the meantime I'll continue face-planting into various bits of other skaters' bodies, as they seem to really enjoy that. I was quite sure that whatever the next thing was, I had to be better at that.
But when we started practising crossovers things got a bit depressing. I literally could not lift one skate over the other, seemingly through a combination of fear and sheer lack of coordination. So of the new skills I’d learnt that day I could do exactly none. I could see others around me progressing and with my already significant disadvantage of having never roller-skated prior to last week, I started to realise that being any good at this roller derby malarkey was going to be one hell of an uphill struggle, one that my impending three week holiday would not do anything to improve. All manner of irritating American ‘can-do attitude’ patter flooded through my mind but the stubborn response of my useless limbs just left me with this song going through my head (please note I am Barry not Freda in this particular analogy).
All failures aside, I still had a great time, and I will of course be returning next week for many further attempts at getting something right. Anything. My mantra shall be:
I returned for my second week of roller derby training on a wet August evening. Outside, the weather was distinctly moist. I felt this would accurately match the conditions INSIDE the building too, where the forecast was for light moisture early on, becoming heavy later, with widespread showers. (Of sweat, that is. Just in case you didn’t read last week’s blog and missed the analogy there).
My giant skate woes were vanquished this week by the excellent Sniper Viper of the Newcastle Roller Girls who arrived brandishing a spare pair of disco boots which totally fit! Thanks to that lady! Unfortunately however, the curse of the giant gear didn’t end there, as this week I ended up with a helmet so big it looked as though it may have been formed from a cast of an elephant skull. It was approximately the size of a waste paper basket and it rattled around on my apparently tiny head like a box on the head of a small child pretending to be a robot. No matter, the improved ventilation was excellent news for the sweat situation. Although the seeing situation was somewhat hampered what with all the helmet slippage. These things are sent to try us!
Our coach for session two was the beguilingly named Man-Shaped Dog, one of the team’s NSO’s and captain of the newly-formed Merby team ‘Tyne and Fear’ (that’s men’s roller derby for those of you wondering. It is most certainly NOT a dodgy-sounding hairpiece which is, for some reason, what it brings to mind for me. Don’t ask). He had a skills session in store for us which included a variety of extremely handy techniques such as turning, stopping, and going round corners quickly. All very useful stuff, of course. Unfortunately with my lack of experience I was lagging behind, still on the week 1 basics which mainly included ‘staying upright and moving forwards’. But I was getting better at these, at least; I wanted to shout it from the rooftops: ‘look at me! I can skate! I am king of the world!’ but sadly no-one really seemed interested in my new-found skill and I felt something of the frustration of a two-year child trying to get around in a room full of assuredly mobile five-year olds all going about their business on just their two feet without the need for hands OR knees.
Turning was first on the list. ‘We’re going to skate up to the cone and do a 180 degree turn,’ our confident coach assured us. Oh ARE we now?! Is that what you think? I think I can accurately predict the outcome of this particular exercise. And as if by magic, I reached the cone, and managed ooh I don’t know, perhaps 36 degree’s worth of vague left-ward glide before I let myself drift to a halt and shuffled my skate-laden feet round the remaining 144 degrees. Yes, of course we are. I concluded that perhaps turning wasn’t my forte and left it at that.
Next up was stopping. Personally, I felt this possibly would have been better placed as the very first thing we learnt, as it’s sort of integral to the process of not embedding one’s face in walls/the floor/other people’s backs. But hey, what do I know. We learnt two different ways of stopping, one of which involved superhuman outer thigh muscles and the other which involved dragging your wheels along the floor behind you making all kinds of horrendous floor scrapey noises. I wasn’t very good at either of them. Never mind, in the meantime I'll continue face-planting into various bits of other skaters' bodies, as they seem to really enjoy that. I was quite sure that whatever the next thing was, I had to be better at that.
But when we started practising crossovers things got a bit depressing. I literally could not lift one skate over the other, seemingly through a combination of fear and sheer lack of coordination. So of the new skills I’d learnt that day I could do exactly none. I could see others around me progressing and with my already significant disadvantage of having never roller-skated prior to last week, I started to realise that being any good at this roller derby malarkey was going to be one hell of an uphill struggle, one that my impending three week holiday would not do anything to improve. All manner of irritating American ‘can-do attitude’ patter flooded through my mind but the stubborn response of my useless limbs just left me with this song going through my head (please note I am Barry not Freda in this particular analogy).
All failures aside, I still had a great time, and I will of course be returning next week for many further attempts at getting something right. Anything. My mantra shall be:
Firstly, 10 points for managing to slip Victoria Wood's song in there. It makes me howl every time. ^_^
ReplyDeleteAnd secondly, thank god! My foot just physically would NOT cross over my other one. My brain just wouldn't let it and I could see nigh on everyone around me gliding past and it did feel a bit pants.
I honestly think though, that seeing as we've never skated before this, we're doing an awesome job so far and should be super proud we can even go forward. I definitely am. =]