On Sunday I managed to get in 5 hours of skating!
The first 3 hours were spent at North Bridge Leisure Centre with The Bruising Banditas. They had invited The Skateful Dead to practice drills with them. This kind of practice is one of the elements that we are missing from our training. Not through fault, but just because of time constraints. The first two hours were run by Sue. We did work on maintaining a correct “derby position”, crossovers and stops. Working on skills this way is so important because it forces you to work on your “weak side”. Every time I skate I try to make myself work on skills that I can do one way round, but not the other. Every time I’m half-arsed about it. I revert to going faster and just being comfortable.
We also did some work on lateral cutting of the track in pairs – working as though we were joined at the hip, cutting left and right. This then became trying to hip-flick the partner out of bounds. Really good stuff – I really hope that we get invited to future drill sessions, and I have things to practice next time I find myself on track, perhaps at Futsal on a Wednesday.
Sue had to leave after 2 hours. For the final hour we did a positional scrimmage with the remaining Banditas – so no heavy hitting. I really enjoyed it – I fell a few times, got rather too many penalties and scored some points. I find scrimmages help with my understanding of the game – though I have so much to learn – I find I’m often not quite sure what I should be doing as a blocker. Anyway, our team won, which is always a bonus :-)
After that we had an hour to scoot over to Whitcliffe Mount Sports Centre – once again I have Tone Death to thank for driving. We took on snacks and caffeine, put on fresh t-shirts and clammy pads and going for a further 2 hours rolling.
Adam and I had to get through our mins, and the rest of the team joined in and helped. We worked down the list, covering anything that we’d not already done. Adam plays roller hockey so he just flew through them. I was okay on most of them, but failed on standing still for 30 seconds on one skate. Not a particularly useful skill IMHO. We skipped over that one, I said I’d retry it at the end of the session. That all took about an hour. The last hour was scrimmage – what else! Ida Tackett from Banditas had come over and joined in with the session. She was a little nervous I think but enjoyed it – she’s a damn good jammer! There were a few falls during the session – more than normal. Adam landed on a skate with his thigh, that will be a lovely bruise. Dylan got wiped out one time too I think. I fell quite heavily, landing on my backside. I’m expecting – I can’t find a chair soft enough just now ;-) Then Mandy declared that we needed to calm things down, we can’t afford to be injuring each other. At the end of the game we discussed how we’d played. Walls need to be improved, players need to not query referee calls. Standard!
I still had to stand still for two lots of 30 seconds. Phil and I found a quite corner and I DID IT!
I’VE PASSED MY MINS!
More fluids and then the rules test for four of us. The requirement is 80% or better from 45 questions (36 correct answers). I’d spent some time playing on Sausage Roller’s handy Android app and got 41/45.
So that and the mins means that I’m now allowed to take part in bouts!