We're 11 days from the draft onto teams. A couple of weeks ago I decided my strategy for draft was this: If I make a team I'm going to fight like hell to be the best derby player I can be. If I don't make a team, I'm going to fight like hell to be the best derby player I can be. With that out of the way, it's a waiting game and I'm not a patient person. So....
Practice
I got a major penalty for blocking out of bounds - which meant that I was blocking someone (the jammer)! Awesome! However, I did spend more time falling on my ass than usual. It seems this was a result of not being low enough.
(The following is going to seem like a non sequitur, but stay with me)
Yesterday was Rat City's first bout of the season. I witnessed two epic jammer awareness moments. On the first, Ann R. Kissed got lead jammer, but Luna Negra broke out of the pack right behind her. Usually at this point, the lead jammer will call off the jam before hitting the pack to prevent anyone from scoring points. Instead, Ann proceeded to do some one on one positional blocking, and I couldn't figure out why until Luna stumbled and fell, thus giving Ann the opportunity she needed to race to the pack and score a few points before calling it off.
The second epic jammer awareness moment came with Anya Heels jamming. FYI anyone who has ever uttered the words "I'm too big to jam" needs to watch this video and STFU. At any rate, Anya got lead jammer and once again, the opposing jammer (I forgot who) broke out right behind her. This time not only did Anya do some fantastic one on one positional blocking, she actually managed slow the opposing jammer enough for her teammate, Shovey Chase to give a fabulous legal hit and reabsorb the opposing jammer into the pack. Incredible.
What I learned from that, is maybe I should pay attention to stuff when I get lead jammer and I'm racing around the track like I did again today. It was like a whole new world opened up for me because you can assess the pack before you get there. I made one scoring pass, came around for the second, almost made it through again but got knocked down and when I got up I noticed the other jammer was in the pack ahead of me, so I called it. I know this is very basic, but considering yesterday was the 'calling off the jam for no good reason' incident, I felt pretty good about it.
Speed Skating
I'm not sure there's much of note here today. Skate hard, turn left. Actually, one of the speed skaters says my balance has improved a lot and I think so too. We did some work on left leg pushes, my Achilles heel of speed. It seems like pushing with your left leg would be about your left leg, but actually it's about balance and putting your hip into the turn.
X-Training
5 X 30 second 'get ups' on 1 minute rest (15, 16, 16, 15, 15)
2 X 30 pushups
Glute curcuit
<originally posted on 1.22.12>
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