Changing winds?

I felt a billion times better at practice last night.  There was NO crying and I felt generally more positive about the drills and exercises that we did.  I admit that there was some trepidation about thirty minutes before I left for practice and I did find myself on the potty trying to figure out if my stomach felt funny because of digestive issues or nerves.  (Nerves.)  But I think the major change about last night was that I had practiced picking my feet up while skating.  I was ready for the thirty minutes of pre-stretching, warm-up skating that they make us do each week.  My master plan to be better at those thirty minutes was foiled (of course) by the fact that the coach made us skate clockwise!  Ugh! I had not practiced my clockwise skating this past week and I blame that on the Palladium.  Usually at Open Skate they play maybe one or two songs where we have to skate in the reverse direction, but at my last two Open Skates they did the limbo and the hokey pokey as their special skates!  Grrrrrrrr.

Next up:  Suicides.  Call me crazy, but I have always liked these and was first introduced to them at high school soccer practices many, many years ago.  I was a little bit excited to see how I would do at these after figuring out the lifting of the feet thing, but I got a bit nervous because there were a few too many people in my line and that made it difficult to navigate stopping and turning around.  I'm pretty sure I was last in all of the suicide drills, but it didn't bother me like it usually does.  Plus, between some of the drills we had to do that throw down abdominal exercise -- the one where a partner stands at your head, you lift your feet above your head, and she then throws your feet to the floor, but you can't let them hit the floor.  I love these!  I'm kind of good at them, because underneath my layer of stomach blubber I have insanely strong abs.  Plus, I think it's all about how you breathe during these ab exercises.

For the rest of the practice we worked on hitting drills.  Hitting!  Already?  But it has only been a month!  Okay, well I suppose we have to start that sometime.  We first did some drills with cones to figure out the foot and body movements and then we were partnered up.  Pixie Painful was my partner and she was really positive, encouraging, and gave me lots of pointers.  The worst part was figuring out how not to be crushed by her powerful hits.  She just said to get low in derby position.  I think that helped my butt stay off the ground.   We then did the drill in the pace line.  Yikes!  I made it through, though I veered off course a few times.  I also got knocked out of the pace line a few times by some super power blocks.  Crazy.

We ended the night with an optional Queen of the Rink, whereby you skate around, hit or be hit, and the last one left standing is the Queen.  I looked at FM Daisy who decided to stay in and, well, since she was my ride, I stuck around too.  I wasn't in for long before Pixie knocked me out of bounds, but before that happened there was one moment where someone came for me from the left, but I went right and behind her and avoided the hit. Yay!

So that was it.  I came home, soaked my feet, guzzled down some kiwi-strawberry flavored electrolyte juice, and went to bed.  I woke up a bit sore, but I'm actually looking forward to practice tonight.  That is a nice feeling.