Adrenaline pumping, heart pounding joyfully in my chest, breath expanding my whole torso, deep derby stance, arms swinging and fast crossovers with my feet as I sprint the track with about 15 or 20 other girls. Coasting on a few of the turns, bending deeply with my right leg out to the side just slightly, leaning to my left and feeling that amazing wind on me, like a dog with its head out the car window. I want to go faster, dig deeper. I'm feeling my feet through my skates in ecstatic conversation with the floor and my legs surprise me with their availability for more.
This is extraordinary. I am super energized and the happiest I've been in weeks. The closest experience to flight I can imagine. I'm deeply in touch with myself, blissfully free, unencumbered by my daily momming duties. Truly, this moment cannot get any better.
And then, the guys working on the sound system test it out by playing "Thriller." In its entirety.
OMG!!!!! I can't believe this is actually happening. It's a tiny bit of magic, just surreal enough to send me over the edge into Giddyland. A mythical place I had almost forgotten existed lately, being sick on and off for two months, and struggling to care for the wee ones.
If I haven't mentioned it already, music is essential to my being. I experience it and the vibrations it offers with my whole. Even if I am perfectly still it's as if my cells are dancing. From as young as I can remember there are songs that mark moments in time. I hear them and the details of that time come back to me, fill my mind, my heart, my very skin.
I laugh like a maniac, skate even harder, exit the track, and in true, glorious nerd form proceed to perform the zombie dance from said song as I loop with my group and wait for the next round of the Pyramid Drill.
Ah, the Pyramid Drill. Fun fun fun fun fun. Did I say fun?? We were broken into two groups of about 15 or 20 skaters. This is an endurance drill, you are supposed to alternate groups and sprint a series of 1,3,5 and 7 laps and then 5,3,and 1 laps. Works out to 25 laps total, broken up into the intervals I mentioned and with a few minutes break in between as you wait for the other group to finish. Extra fun with images of MJ, his sweet leather jacket, red capri pants and the boogying living dead in my head.
I feel the need to share that this experience was especially meaningful to me on a very personal level. My girlfriend that died last month organized a "Thriller" party a few years back with the goal of all of us learning the choreography and dancing it together in her tiny NY living room. It was one of her favs. I miss her so much, and this combined with the rush of skating totally made my day. I can just hear her, eyes twinkling and going bonkers clapping and laughing about this and the strange random existence of the two.
Besides the awesome Pyramid Drill we also worked on suicides. The coach set up 2 cones at different distances across the rink from the wall where we would start. The deal was we would start on our stomachs or backs on the floor, pop up, sprint to the first cone and do a one knee fall, get up, sprint back to the wall we started at, tomahawk stop, (i will explain what this stop is in the next paragraph) sprint back out to the second cone and do a one knee fall, sprint back to the wall, tomahawk stop, then sprint all the way across to the opposite wall, one knee fall and sprint back to the original wall and tomahawk. We repeated this whole drill minus the falls, only with tomahawk stops.
I missed the practice where we learned the tomahawk stop. So needless to say, this drill was a little rough around the edges for me. Instead of flipping backwards and stopping on my toe stops I kept doing these wacky spread eagle Nancy Kerrigan-ish spins. Or perhaps more akin to Snoopy in the Charlie Brown Christmas special. Which I have to say were kind of purdy, but utterly useless.
I must confess, after plundering through the suicide drill, and vowing to make amends my new all-time favorite thing is the tomahawk stop. I want to keep doing them over and over I am so addicted. It's one of the more bad ass derby moves if you ask me and if I had known about them they would have been enough for me to want to skate derby sooner than now.
What you do is turn backwards while skating and then slam both toe stops down to stop. It's a very quick and abrupt stop, but sometimes you slide backwards just a little as well. You need to have one leg kind of in front a bit and really need to bend your knees. This stop is pretty handy if you need to take off quickly again because you already have your toe stops down and are ready to run.
I realized last night the total secret for me is to let my head and shoulders whip super fast similar to spotting in dance. That way you are already looking in the opposite direction and not spending too much time in the turning backwards transition. Another important detail I "stumbled" upon (hee hee...LITERALLY) in my learning process was never, ever for any reason to look down at the floor. Once I figured that out I got it. It was the end of practice and one of my teammates and I had an insane amount of fun skating behind each other, hip whipping off the front person so we could pick up more speed and then turning to tomahawk and putting on a ridiculously campy show of our most threatening derby faces and arm gestures.
Gosh I love this. I just can't imagine my life without it. I am so glad I had the balls to go for it last September. I will leave you with a parting video for your enjoyment.
This is extraordinary. I am super energized and the happiest I've been in weeks. The closest experience to flight I can imagine. I'm deeply in touch with myself, blissfully free, unencumbered by my daily momming duties. Truly, this moment cannot get any better.
And then, the guys working on the sound system test it out by playing "Thriller." In its entirety.
OMG!!!!! I can't believe this is actually happening. It's a tiny bit of magic, just surreal enough to send me over the edge into Giddyland. A mythical place I had almost forgotten existed lately, being sick on and off for two months, and struggling to care for the wee ones.
If I haven't mentioned it already, music is essential to my being. I experience it and the vibrations it offers with my whole. Even if I am perfectly still it's as if my cells are dancing. From as young as I can remember there are songs that mark moments in time. I hear them and the details of that time come back to me, fill my mind, my heart, my very skin.
I laugh like a maniac, skate even harder, exit the track, and in true, glorious nerd form proceed to perform the zombie dance from said song as I loop with my group and wait for the next round of the Pyramid Drill.
Ah, the Pyramid Drill. Fun fun fun fun fun. Did I say fun?? We were broken into two groups of about 15 or 20 skaters. This is an endurance drill, you are supposed to alternate groups and sprint a series of 1,3,5 and 7 laps and then 5,3,and 1 laps. Works out to 25 laps total, broken up into the intervals I mentioned and with a few minutes break in between as you wait for the other group to finish. Extra fun with images of MJ, his sweet leather jacket, red capri pants and the boogying living dead in my head.
I feel the need to share that this experience was especially meaningful to me on a very personal level. My girlfriend that died last month organized a "Thriller" party a few years back with the goal of all of us learning the choreography and dancing it together in her tiny NY living room. It was one of her favs. I miss her so much, and this combined with the rush of skating totally made my day. I can just hear her, eyes twinkling and going bonkers clapping and laughing about this and the strange random existence of the two.
Besides the awesome Pyramid Drill we also worked on suicides. The coach set up 2 cones at different distances across the rink from the wall where we would start. The deal was we would start on our stomachs or backs on the floor, pop up, sprint to the first cone and do a one knee fall, get up, sprint back to the wall we started at, tomahawk stop, (i will explain what this stop is in the next paragraph) sprint back out to the second cone and do a one knee fall, sprint back to the wall, tomahawk stop, then sprint all the way across to the opposite wall, one knee fall and sprint back to the original wall and tomahawk. We repeated this whole drill minus the falls, only with tomahawk stops.
I missed the practice where we learned the tomahawk stop. So needless to say, this drill was a little rough around the edges for me. Instead of flipping backwards and stopping on my toe stops I kept doing these wacky spread eagle Nancy Kerrigan-ish spins. Or perhaps more akin to Snoopy in the Charlie Brown Christmas special. Which I have to say were kind of purdy, but utterly useless.
I must confess, after plundering through the suicide drill, and vowing to make amends my new all-time favorite thing is the tomahawk stop. I want to keep doing them over and over I am so addicted. It's one of the more bad ass derby moves if you ask me and if I had known about them they would have been enough for me to want to skate derby sooner than now.
What you do is turn backwards while skating and then slam both toe stops down to stop. It's a very quick and abrupt stop, but sometimes you slide backwards just a little as well. You need to have one leg kind of in front a bit and really need to bend your knees. This stop is pretty handy if you need to take off quickly again because you already have your toe stops down and are ready to run.
I realized last night the total secret for me is to let my head and shoulders whip super fast similar to spotting in dance. That way you are already looking in the opposite direction and not spending too much time in the turning backwards transition. Another important detail I "stumbled" upon (hee hee...LITERALLY) in my learning process was never, ever for any reason to look down at the floor. Once I figured that out I got it. It was the end of practice and one of my teammates and I had an insane amount of fun skating behind each other, hip whipping off the front person so we could pick up more speed and then turning to tomahawk and putting on a ridiculously campy show of our most threatening derby faces and arm gestures.
Gosh I love this. I just can't imagine my life without it. I am so glad I had the balls to go for it last September. I will leave you with a parting video for your enjoyment.
I'm so jealous! I'll be there on Wednesday!!! I can't wait to get in there with you!
ReplyDeleteLizz
Lola la Slam