Feeling the Burn...Out

Thirty-five minutes until practice starts. I wish I could crawl into a hole.

Saturday, we have a bout against Red Stick Roller Derby. The thought makes me nervous in ways that playing against Greenville, a relative unknown to me, did not. Greenville handed us our asses in ways I'm pretty sure that Red Stick will not. But still, there's a lingering memory associated with Baton Rouge, one that I know my teammates don't share. They were never in that position to have it in the first place.

C'mon, Mary, that was right in front of your face! You're not gonna call that?! What the hell is wrong with you?

I remember wincing, maybe visibly. FFE, Red Stick's coach (whose full name is perhaps best not spelled out for impressionable eyes), had been on my case for this entire bout.

By half-time, my eyes were brimming with tears. Back in the ref room, I bitched bitterly about how disrespectful he was, and how I couldn't concentrate with him riding my ass every time I did (or didn't) make a call.

Come to think of it, I'm not actually sure I made any calls in that game. I'm not sure that I raised that whistle to my lips even once to call a skater off, or even to call off a jam.

The first time I ever reffed a bout was one of the worst experiences of my derby career. It certainly wasn't as bad as the second bout I ever reffed, but that's another story for another time. I hadn't transitioned from rollergirl to ref that long ago, and I knew without a doubt that I was not ready to ref a bout. I kept telling myself that.

I'm pretty sure my lack of confidence showed. For a ref, that's a deadly disability, and rollergirls will prey on it. I didn't understand the interplay between teams and referees, the way that during a game, rollergirls will not only cuss you out but curse your entire family line, and then be totally fine at the after party. It takes a while for refs to get to the point where those insults roll off their shoulders. Some refs never get there. I imagine that plenty quit under the strain of that load.

When I think about Red Stick Roller Derby, that's what I remember. Being absolutely terrified of skating as a ref, but being forced to do it because (surprise!) they hadn't brought any refs with them, and hadn't thought fit to tell us until they set foot in the Skate Center. I'm at least Facebook friends with many of their skaters now. Meeting them face to face, I understand now that they're not the ten foot ogres they seemed when I reffed that bout.

But, I know that this weekend will be no walk in the park. Red Stick is a WFTDA Apprentice League now. They've been trained by some of the smartest and best in the sport.


***

Thirty-five minutes after practice, and I'm not sure what to make of what just happened to me.

When practice started, I felt short of breath. I figured that had a lot to do with me, you know, missing about a week of skating due to tornadoes or the mass of papers sprawled all over my office floor, one or the other. No big deal, right?

Uh, wrong.

During our warmup (our damn warmup, for gods' sakes), I sat down, panting for breath. During our second drill, I practically collapsed on the sidelines. My breath sounded like a noisy hacksaw, I was dizzy, my knees were weak, and a steady tattoo of I can't, I can't, I can't was pounding against my forehead.

That same summer, the one I described above, the one of that disastrous Red Stick bout (and my second disastrous bout), I started having panic attacks.

They were frequent. My thoughts raced, one after the other, taunting me because no matter how hard I focused on calming them, they wouldn't slow down. My hands trembled, my heart pounded, my breaths were shallow and quick. I felt like I was dying. The way the terror rose up in my throat and exploded into my brain was like nothing I had ever known before.

I couldn't do anything. Watching TV made me have panic attacks. Reading made me have panic attacks. Playing World of Warcraft (which was one of my only outlets that long summer) made me have panic attacks. It was literally impossible some days for me to get out of bed. I couldn't sleep, but being awake was torture.

More than ten times a day, I'd feel them coming on, and my body would start to tremble. Endless fear, endless overreaction to things that shouldn't have mattered. I couldn't make them not matter.

When I skated, I'd forget about those things for as long as I was at the rink. Reffing isn't for me, I know that now, but without it, I don't know that I would have left the house that summer. In a very real way, roller derby (and BCR) held me together at a time when all the seams were popping apart and nothing made sense.

That anxiety was crippling, and I doubt I will ever forget what it felt like. It reared its ugly head inside my chest tonight. It leapt up from what I thought was certain death like some perverse black phoenix and said hey jackass, remember me?

It's like some fated movie showdown between good and evil, only I'm not really sure I'm either one of those things, but just me, my surname being entirely appropriate for someone who's somewhere in between most things, content to be neither this nor that, but to exist unlabeled and unquantified.

One drill I sat out because it was a race. I knew my heartrate would get up again, and I didn't trust myself not to freak out. But halfway through it, when it was my scrimmage team's turn to go do burpees while the other team sprinted back and forth, I just said the hell with it and went and did burpees with my team.

It was like flipping a breaker into the off position. Once the current quit flowing into those neurons at breakneck speed, I just skated. I skated and I hit people and yeah, I definitely nailed some people in the wrong places, and yeah I definitely didn't always pay attention when I should have, but it was about more than that for me tonight.

Panic Disorder (if that's what I even have - maybe it's just what they call "Generalized Anxiety Disorder," which never seemed like a very helpful label to me) isn't something that just goes away. You can treat it, but it's more along the lines of managing than it is disappearing it completely.

I knew someday I'd have to face it again. It's ironic that it's rearing its ugly head right before our bout with Red Stick, the very bout at which I started to discover that something inside of me was going very wrong.

I take a low dose anti-depressant every day, and I have for almost two years now. If things get bad, I have a mild anti-anxiety pill that I can take to stave off the panic attacks. Usually, I only take one a day, with my anti-depressant, but either way, I'm tethered to those little orange bottles because sometimes even with them, I don't manage the condition well.

One of my greatest fears once that summer was over and I'd finally gotten some relief from it all was that it would come back one day. It's not realistic for me to expect to never have issues with anxiety again, or even to expect that I'll never have a panic attack again. Tonight was a jolt that reminded me of that fact.

There's one thing I've learned since 2009, though, and much, if not most, of the lesson came to me from starting to skate derby, which I didn't even have the courage to pursue until long after my knee had healed.

It's perhaps best phrased with the tag line from Treme: "Won't bow, don't know how."

If there's anything that I know about myself, it's that I'm a resilient person. I've been through far too much bullshit (there's really no other way to phrase it) than is worth recounting in this blog, but I'm still here, "bloody but unbowed," as it were.

I've been apprehensive about playing Red Stick ever since I saw our season schedule way back in December. Maybe, though, it wasn't Red Stick that I was anxious about. I had a sneaking suspicion, and after tonight, it's becoming a certainty: the monster in the closet may actually look a lot like me.

War Music, Part I

I warned you all that I'd be writing about music. You should have listened.

I should explain at this point that my music taste is somewhat... eccentric. I could rattle off a list of my favorite bands that would positively baffle most people. Is that even a band? Where are they from?

However, I believe it's a good thing for people to broaden their horizons. In the area of music, that's something I do constantly. You might say it's a bit of an obsession. Music for writing, music for concentrating, music to get hyped up for this, that, and the other. As I mentioned yesterday, it's pretty bizarre to me that I've never written about music in this blog before, but there's time to remedy that, at least.

Five songs I've been spinning today to get my mind in the right place for derby mayhem tomorrow:

1. "Valkyries," Amberian Dawn - A song that talks about the mythical Valkyries. For those of you not up on your Norse mythology, they are women warriors who would fly over the battlefield choosing which warriors would die. Could anything be more badass than that?

Favorite lyrics: "Shieldmaidens ride the wolves in the sky with ravens
scouting the battleground for souls of slain heroes.

Choosers of slain.

Valkyries ride through the night sky
singing fierce battle-cries,
Valkyries, choosers of slain, come ride their wolves!"

2. "Voittamaton," Villielain - Another fine product of Finland, who I shall ever maintain puts out the finest rock music there is. Not only are there amazing coloratura soprano vocals (in a metal song), the chorus translates as "I am, I am, I am now invincible."

3. "Wings of Darkness," Tarot - Yet another Finnish band, and one of my favorites. Old-style power metal in another song about how Vikings will kick your teeth in and use your skull for a hat. I seem to find that metaphor rather inspiring this week, but then again, what's more inspiring than some of the most feared warriors in the history of the planet? That's right. Raise your sword.

Favorite lyrics: "No place is safe from us in underworld of sky
Live on the edge, looking danger into the eye"

4. "Wreak Havoc," Angelspit - Angelspit is a relatively new acquisition of mine, but I don't really know how I lived without them. Crazy, dark, industrial, hard - and I love it. This song in particular helps me get ready to play derby, because it reminds me of what I said yesterday: my aspiration to one day be the Cthulhu of jammers.

Favorite lyrics: "Right now right now RIOT NOW
WREAK HAVOC
Right now right now RIOT NOW
UNLEASH HELL!"

It's impossible not to yell along.

5. "Sturm & Drang," KMFDM - It's always hard for me to pick a favorite KMFDM song, but this week, this is it. It's driving and aggressive, the mood I need to be in for a good game of derby.

Favorite lyrics: "You make and break your own restrictions
You write and prove your own revisions
You become new

You sweat and bleed pure fascination
You thrive upon disintegration
You break through

The truth the lies all fabrications
Only you control your destination
You are what you do"

A perfect reminder of those goals I set yesterday, and a ridiculously awesome song to boot.

So that's my five - this time around. Be sure to post and let me know if you found some new bands from my list. You can also let me know if you absolutely hated the songs, but remember, I'm all hyped up. I may hurt you. ;)

Good night, and may Quad bless your travels this bout weekend.

Flippin' Switches and Hittin' Bitches

Some of the best derby advice that I have indirectly received is a quote from, if I'm not mistaken, Heidi Volatile: "When in doubt, hit a bitch." It is a quote that I have oft-repeated, especially when I talk to fresher meat than I who need some reassuring, and especially when I was team captaining back at BnB.

As it turns out, that's harder advice to follow than I figured. Then again, like most things worth listening to, it's much harder to commit and do it than it is to talk big about it.

Saturday is approaching with a vengeance. It's the first home bout of the season. Wednesday night, I feel like shit. My hormones have chosen this particular week to run wild on me. I am snapping people's heads off left and right, my back is killing me, and my stomach is tied up in knots, though it's difficult to tell what of that is what we might delicately call "woman troubles" and what is what we might delicately call "bout tummy."

Practice was tense tonight. It always seems to be the Wednesday before a bout. People get snippy with each other. The air gets thick. Hits get hard, and sometimes they get sloppy. Curse words are said, and sometimes, they even sound like they're said with malice.

If our bout against Dixie Derby Girls was any indication, this must be just something we need to do before a bout. We need to use the scrimmage time on Wednesday as a way to get all our nerves out, all our frustrations and fears. When things start to look like a hot mess out there, it gets a little nerve-wracking to see us playing like that, but I know we can pull it together.

In Huntsville, we played like a well-oiled machine. It was the first time I've ever been to slow my mind down enough to do what I needed to do. In fact, for the most part, I just turned it off, and let my body go on auto-pilot. You know what to do. Block now. Stall now. Slow down now. Call out to your teammates now.

I felt liberated. Finally free from my over-analysis, my fear of failure, and my dogged inner critic that simply will not shut the hell up when it's time for her to do so.

It took me two seasons to get here, and one of those seasons, I was reffing - and was just as critical, and just as insecure.

Without a doubt, Huntsville, at least for me, was a milestone to celebrate. I'm not Amyn or Saintly - I don't have that kind of pack awareness, or the ability to just sit on jammers the way they do. I'm not a monster like Ziggy who sends jammers sailing every time she lays eyes on them. Yet. So while I may not have been the best skater on the team at Huntsville, I know on my own that I improved a lot that day.

Greenville, though, is no time for resting on my laurels. I've been well informed already that, strategy wise, this will be like nothing I've ever encountered before. Yes, I've watched slow derby, but it's another thing entirely to be using it. I'm nervous. That's putting it lightly. I've been trying not to think about it as much as possible, because I don't want to turn into a nutcase.

I read something tonight on Roller Derby Inside Track that made me think a bit about Saturday, though, and about my nerves: "Hungry teams excel by moving out of the comfort zones." The same can be said of hungry skaters, and all I've wanted since I started playing roller derby was to constantly get better at it. To one day be that blocker that nobody wants to mess with, the one that other teams yell for their blockers to stay on, lest she continually tear jammers asunder. The Cthulhu of blocking, materializing to - yeah, okay, enough of metaphors.

And I can't do that by being scared and sitting on my performance at Huntsville. One improved bout performance doesn't make me a good player, but continually doing something better at every bout will. So... it's time to set goals again.

1. Chase that damn jammer. I have a terrible habit of giving up every time a jammer passes me, and then getting mad at myself. At the core, it's two contradictory motions of the brain - You can't catch up with that jammer! You could have caught up with that jammer if you'd tried!

But I'll never know if I could have caught up with her if I don't try. Yeah, maybe I'll miss her. In that case, I'll slow down. And if I hit her, good game. And if I hit her and go to the box because I'm out of play, well I still hit her. A trip to the box is worth it in some cases.

2. Be aware of where my jammer needs me to be. Above all things, our jammer situation for Saturday is weird, to say the least. Sometimes I feel like I'm not always where my jammer needs me to be in order for me to get her through the pack. I feel like I defend against the other jammer much more readily than I get my own through the pack.

Saturday, I'm going to pay attention to my jammer just as much, because playing only defensively is playing irresponsibly. If my jammer has someone sitting on her and needs me to block her out of the way, then you better bet I'm going to try my damnedest to do that. Needs a whip? I'm there. Gets stuck? Not alone. My jammers need to know they can trust me to take care of them.

3. Play aggressively, but with a clear head. A team like Greenville wants other teams to get frustrated and blow their cool - that's how a strategy like what they do works. The other team gets mad. In their frustration, they don't think straight, forget how to defend against Greenville's strategy. And they lose.

It's hard to know what to expect this weekend, but easy enough to see that, maybe more so than any other games, if we get over-emotional, this one will go out the window. Part of the strategy of slow derby IS pissing off the other team. Throwing them off their game and leaving them without a defense OR an offense.

And part of the counter-strategy is to beat them at their own game. Adapt, build walls, keep your cool, play your game. I promise myself not to be part of a problem on Saturday, no matter how mad I want to get.

Time to set course for the weekend - tomorrow, pre-bout music. A perennial favorite of mine that I've somehow managed to never write about.

Ten Things I Learned This Weekend

In the grand BCR tradition started by 9lb., usually written on Facebook, I'm about to drop a knowledge bomb. I'm going to move all these notes over to my blog from now on, partially for interest's sake, and partially because I have more control over formatting and whatnot here than I do on Facebook.

Without further ado...

10. Saintly knows a thing or two about underpants preparedness. Just ask her.

9. Although this is roller derby, there is indeed a point where there is Too Much Booty.

8. Free food makes an after party happy. Especially good free food. Especially the cupcake kind of free food.

7. Slim knows many different ways to use a pool cue. I can't tell you any of them because that's classified information.

6. It's really, really funny when random bar dudes try to chat up your gay teammates. Do you tell them? No. Definitely not. You let them shoot themselves in the foot. You watch, and you wait, and you giggle behind your hand.

5. Having good refs is a joyous experience. Everything ran so smoothly that there really isn't anything to complain about from an officiating perspective.

4. WFTDA stat geeks impress me. Reading over our stat sheet from Saturday's bout, there is so much information that I'm floored. Who got points on whom, every single lineup we fielded, the percentage of the bout a player played. Amazing.

3. Bea and Monroe (who I insatiably desire to call Mo-Mo for some reason) played like seasoned players in their first bout. No fear, no problem.

2. It is insanely amazing to watch teeny little Lita go after a jammer. It is even more amazing to watch her knock them to the floor with her fierceness.

1. Although we won by a very large margin Saturday, and although those are usually the times when you start putting in your "second string" players, I think derby somehow handles this differently. I feel like if we hadn't skated as hard as we did for the whole game, that would have been insulting to DDG. They deserved our best, and we gave them our best. And I am very proud.

Derby Stories, Part II: A Team, by Any Other Name

March 19, 2011. It's time for a new beginning, I tell myself. This is where it all starts. It's where it all started in 2008 anyway. Maybe this is where I should have always been. Me and BCR, BCR and me.

We got to the venue pretty early, but we weren't staying the night, so we didn't have a hotel room to hang out in. The ride up was relaxed, but as long as I've known Slim now, I didn't expect it to be otherwise. My newest derby wife is the only one still actively involved with a team. She and I have seen, frankly, dumb shit go down. That we're still skating says something about tenacity and passion for this sport.

Chatty's place was huge, way bigger than the other convention centers I've skated in. The dressing room was tiny and hot. My stomach was doing trampoline acrobatics to the extent that I was tempted to bust out the huge jug of whiskey they gave us just to take the edge off.

I felt better, though, because I wasn't the only one. Seedy was one of the earlier arrivals, and admitted that she, too, had what we colloquially call "bout tummy." And I certainly wasn't the only one sweating up a ridiculous storm in my brand new turquoise jersey.

When we went out to warm up and test the floor, I could feel my leg muscles shaking. Trembling might be a better word. I remain cool as a cucumber in most situations, but bouts are an exception. Whether I show it on the outside or not.

I knew the other team was watching me. I tried out stops and falls. I analyzed every movement I made as too slow, too clumsy, somehow unimpressive. They were watching me, I knew they were, and even if they were nice, with every stride I took, I just knew they were analyzing every way they could to pick me apart. Who wouldn't do that to an opponent they don't know? What should I show them? Should I be purposefully clumsy? Should I skate my best and hope for intimidation?

I hate waiting for bouts, more than anything else. Most of the time, we get there hours in advance, we go into our dressing rooms, we strap on our gear, get everything taped into place... and we wait. We sit, and we wait. And the whole time we do that, it feels like a small beaver is gnawing at the inner walls of my stomach, trying to get out.

When the bout started, I admit, I was a little more nervous than usual because of who was wearing the stripes. Major Wood was jam reffing for the bout. From my time as a ref, I just knew - this guy is a big deal. As in, this is the guy that pretty much wrote the rules down. A Big. Freaking. Deal. There were two other WFTDA refs there, and I knew this was going to be penalty calling like I had never experienced before.

I was set to go in every other jam. One jam as pivot, one jam as power blocker. That, I was pretty sure, I could handle, although I've frankly never played a game that I would call a "good game" on my part. Then again, I've only played four real games.

When it was my turn to go in, I couldn't - the person who had played power blocker before me was in the box. I was antsy on the sidelines, wanting to put my feet on that track. Same with the next time I went in to play power. And quite a few other times.

Then, there was the mouthguard disaster. We knew Major Wood was particular about mouthguards. What we didn't know was his peculiar criteria for "particular." 9 was sent to the box when she was jamming, then given another minute because she took her mouthguard out before she sat down. We might as well have had no jammer for two jams at that point. We were scoreless.

We were scoreless for maybe the first ten or fifteen minutes, or hell, it could have been twenty. At some point, the time all starts to run together out there. Certain moments feel agonizingly long, until you look up at the clock and realize ten seconds have gone by. I mentioned that before, when talking about that scoreless Jackson bout.

Oh my God, it's happening again.

I wrestled with myself. Do NOT let this turn into Jackson. Do NOT give up on yourself.

Amyn ordered us back to the locker room for halftime, and I braced for takeoff. I knew she was going to chew us out, let each and every one of us know how terribly we were playing out there, pick out every single mistake we had made and display it for the world. That, after all, was the kind of locker room talk I was used to. It was the kind of locker room talk going on in my last bout in August.

In the locker room, 9 was in tears. Everyone was quiet. Amyn was quiet, at least until 9 said she felt like it was her fault we were losing.

"9, there's no reason to blame yourself. We win as a team, we lose as a team."

I wish I had heard those words in Jackson. They, along with Amyn's encouragement, kept me from crumbling at halftime into self-doubt. She kept me from giving up, probably without even realizing it.

"They think they got us," she said. "They're gettin' cocky."

I didn't care if they won at that point. I've still never won a game, so plainly, my love of derby has nothing to do with the outcome, and everything to do with getting better as a player and as a team. Cho said something similar: "I don't care if they win, I just want us not to give up." To play harder, to skate faster, to score more points, to hold their jammer.

We still lost by 100 points, but whether those girls thought they had us or not, they saw a different side to BCR in the second half. I saw a different side to BCR. The side where a team gets backed into a corner but comes out swinging. No fear.

People cried in the locker room, blamed our loss on bad individual performances.

Even that, though, seemed like something new to me. This was a team that understood something BnB didn't, couldn't. A team that was able to analyze its own performance and realize what could have been better - that each person could have contributed more successfully. That one player doesn't lose a game for thirteen others.

But at the same time, we were guided by people who reminded us of that. It was always us as a team. There were things that the team needed to work on, rather than placing the blame on one person, rather than destroying someone's confidence at halftime and expecting them to go skate another half hour.

Maybe this is why BnB failed.

In any case, past is past - we learn from it, and we move on. I made some bad plays at Chattanooga. I know of at least two incidents where I totally missed a jammer skating by me. I could have played harder, more aggressively. I could have played smarter as a pivot, and directed my teammates more successfully.

I overcame something that Saturday, though. It's been altogether too easy for me to give up. As I've discovered, I really didn't know what it was that 'team' meant last season. I loved my BnB teammates to the point where I never thought I could feel happy in derby without them. But all that love didn't translate into success on the track, and it didn't translate into knowing how to work as a team. Knowing how to feel proud as a team. How can you feel pride if you're constantly beaten down? All that love we supposedly had didn't even translate into the ability to keep the team together. It didn't translate into the ability to respect your former teammates enough to not stab them in the back by creating another team just to embarrass and defeat one person.

Whether they realize it or not, a lot of the BCR vets showed a lot of the newer skaters something very important that Saturday. Somewhere in between the nebulous area of vet and not vet myself, I feel like I can understand these lessons a little easier. There's a time to crawl up a team's ass, to yell at them to motivate them to play better. But there's also a time to remind everyone that the team as a whole is responsible for playing well, not just one person. Good leaders know the difference.

Derby Stories, Part I: The Honeymoon Is Over

Does this girl even play roller derby? some of you may be asking. Does she even know how it can destroy your life? How it can bring out the worst in people?

I do. I've seen a lot of those things firsthand. In myself. In others - opponents, yes, but also teammates, derby wives. Vixen once said that she was selling her soul for roller derby. The remark was intended to be funny, but sometimes, it's not. Or maybe it's funny in the way things are funny because they're true. Maybe I don't write about it that often, but the truth is that for much of last year, I didn't just see the dark side of derby, I lived it.

On August 28 of last year, I played my last bout with BnB. We walked into the Jackson Convention Center right on time. I had played in a mixed scrimmage there last April, so I knew all about the hard hitters, the fast, teeny jammers, and the slick concrete floor.

Unequivocally, I also knew we were screwed.

Tuesday, five days before the bout, three skaters had pulled Ember aside to "talk to her." Predictably, it turned into a screaming match. I always get chosen to moderate bullshit like that. People tell me I'm even-tempered. But even I lost my cool when one of the skaters started shrieking at me because I asked her not to interrupt Ember's explanation. While I tried to listen to their grievances, they accused my derby wife of being a racist, of plagiarizing our logo, of shorting the team on money for the Jackson trip, of attempting to deliberately injure them on the track.

They made their stance very clear: either Ember didn't skate Saturday, or they didn't skate Saturday. Ember had a history of making questionable decisions. I guess I should have see it coming. She refused to back down. Zelda, Fiend Club and Delirium refused to skate, even after I spent the entire week trying to convince them to just finish out the season and not screw over the rest of us because they were pissed at Ember.

It had been a bloody terrible week.

But we couldn't back out. Booking a convention center doesn't come cheap, and we would have owed Magnolia a LOT of money for canceling. We had paid four subs from other teams to fill our roster. We were ten skaters at our strongest, seven when those three quit. BnB had never skated a single bout without the extensive use of subs.

MRV's contract had specified that we were to bring no sub jammers to the bout. Ember chose our subs selectively. Only BIG blockers. If they wouldn't let us have sub jammers when we were woefully short on jammers, then we would stack the deck with huge subs who could lay a jammer out by looking at her. We must have turned down three people or more just because they didn't fit Ember's size requirement for the subs.

Midnight was a nervous wreck. On the drive down, I had joked with Midnight that we had decided to go to New Orleans instead of come to the bout. She believed me. I knew she was nervous, and I knew I was being one of those mean girls to mess with her. Maybe part of me was taking out my frustration on someone who didn't deserve it. That was, after all, a grand BnB tradition.

Some of the others seemed unaffected, mostly because they had no idea what had happened at practice Tuesday. They had no idea why three skaters were mad enough to leave the team. They were here to play derby. I wished fervently that I could trade places and climb in their heads and erase the last week of wasted effort. A cartoonish black thunderstorm surged over my brow, soaking me with very stereotypical misery.

When the first whistle blew, we fell apart. It was a long, long five minutes before we managed to score. Maybe it was longer. It's hard to tell time in moments like this, when seconds of failure stretch into forever. Everyone watched us flounder, dying fish on the sand.

A little more than halfway into the first half, I was playing pivot, at the front of the pack as usual. Our back blockers let Reeta slip through like water through a sieve, and I was the last person who could do a damn thing about it. I knew what I had to do. I dug in and sprinted as she came for the front of the pack. I was on a collision course, going to chase her down and block her to the ground, make the save.

I turned my ankle on that ice-like concrete floor. Hard. As the pain shot through my shin, all I could think about was that I'd let Reeta get away.

I suck at being a hero.

I sat down. I took my skate off. I quietly asked for my derby wife to get me an ice pack for my ankle. Nobody even knew that I was injured until halftime.

I was captain for that bout, as I always was. Ember was co-captain, as she always was. In the locker room, one of the subs was talking over how to redo the lineups with Ember. Ember was ignoring me, not even consulting me on the subject. The sub turned to me and emphasized how terribly she thought I'd played in the first half and what a useless pivot I was. She turned to my derby wife and said that I didn't need to play pivot anymore, and Ember agreed with her. The sub turned back to me and emphasized in her snottiest voice that I was only to concentrate on blocking in the second half.

My stomach twisted harder than my ankle ever could have. My eyes stung. Anger flooded me first and, hands shaking, I skated off to the bathroom. I found Midnight and Vixen in there and I sobbed most of my facepaint off.

It wasn't the first time Ember had made me cry. She was extremely competitive and hated it any time I did something better than her. She was always emphasizing petty things. 'Your kneepads are too tight' meant 'don't you think you're too fat to wear a Size L?' 'I predicted everything you planned to do during the scrimmage tonight' meant 'you're a terrible player without me to back you up.'

Tiny things, raindrops in the ocean, little drops of venom that gradually ate away at my self esteem as a skater.

But nothing Ember said had ever hurt more than what she said during halftime.

I skated only two jams in the second half. I'd love to say it was because of my ankle. But it wasn't. The sub took over running the bench - MY bench - and she refused to put me in. In fact, she refused to put any of us in.

We were losing, so she only put in herself and the other subs. Three jams or more we skated with not a single BnB player in that pack. More than once, I saw Midnight forced to continue skating when she was obviously breathing too hard to function in a pack, much less as a jammer.

I wish I could say I noticed what else happened in the second half. My teammates proved things to themselves while I sat on that bench. I felt like I'd had my head wrapped in cotton, insulated from everything that was going on around me. Numb. Of course we lost. I faked smiles in the after-bout picture, threw all my things in a bag, and shoved everything into the trunk. Many of my teammates were proud of their performances. I wanted to go home.

On the way to the after-party, I broke down in front of my long-suffering husband, my unmoved derby wife, and her smug jackass husband. I couldn't stop my voice from shaking or tears from streaming down my face. Ember told me it was my fault someone else took over the bench. That I wasn't assertive enough. That I should have said something. She told me the only reason she didn't want me to play the second half of the bout was because I was hurt.

I knew a lie when I heard one.

The hell with all the work I'd done to help her set up lineups (which I was not allowed to do on my own in spite of being team captain). The hell with how much work I had put into begging girls not to leave us skating short.

My feelings didn't matter to her then. They mattered to her now for one reason only: she couldn't afford to lose the only person who had supported her the past few months.

If nothing else, Ember had read the writing on the wall. Three skaters had quit the team. That weekend, they went to Atlanta with one of our former fresh meat and decided they were going to start their own derby team. By the time we got back from Jackson, they had a concept for their team, if not a name. In the ensuing weeks, they started recruiting our skaters. If Ember didn't have me, who would she have?

I pulled it together at the after-party. Maybe I just didn't think anyone else needed to see the stress I was under. I was, as many people told me, the glue that held the team together. If it had looked like the glue was failing, everyone would have panicked.

We were staying in a really nice hotel. When we got back, Ember broke out a bottle of rum she'd brought with her. It was the one time I'd ever really seen her get rowdy when she was drunk.

The guys decided they wanted to get some beer. While they were gone, Ember got into a wrestling match with her derby little sister. I'm not that kind of partier. While the two of them shrieked and slapped each other, rolling around on the floor, I sat in one of the hotel chairs and watched.

"Helley, help me!" her little sister shrieked, eyes wide as she tried to escape from Ember's grasp.

That was when Ember crossed the line. I don't remember the words she used, but they meant that I was too attracted to her to stop her from wrestling around on the floor with another woman.

Even after sharing that rum, I couldn't suppress the anger. White, ugly, hard anger that welled up after how she'd treated me at the bout. It was insulting, the way she said it. Helley will let me do anything. She's blindly devoted. She thinks I'm hot.

For the record, I find it hard to be attracted to people who are that mean-spirited. People who prey on the vulnerabilities of others to hide their own.

They broke the bed after that. Her little sister was hanging on to the headboard and Ember jerked her away from it. They pulled it off the wall.

"Oh, don't worry about that," Ember said blithely, "BD will pay for it."

It really didn't matter to me why she thought that was the case. For one of the first times, I was able to let my anger come through clearly. I wanted to hit her for saying it. I wanted to yell at her until my voice was raw.

All night, I listened to her whine and vomit. She was hungover and bitchy in the morning, just like she was always hungover and bitchy whenever she drank. I never understood why she drank like she did when she knew she got bad hangovers. But you can't always protect people from themselves. Sometimes people need to be allowed to self-destruct until they learn something.

And me? I wrapped myself around that core of anger, closing down on it like an oyster. It lay there like an irritant, a constant voice murmuring 'too much, too much, too much.' Until one day not long afterwards, it turned into a roar.

Ember would discover too late that, in the words of one of my favorite poets, "there is some shit I will not eat."

-----

*This post is written in its literary style with apologies to 9 Lb. Hammer, who has pretty much cornered the market on BCR writing.

Climbing Mountains

I started this blog almost a year ago. Looking back through the posts I've written, I'm surprised that I never talked about one thing that seems to be common to all rollergirls: bout day jitters.

Mine, of course, are not content to be bout day jitters. They start early. It's more like bout week jitters. I was nervous already at practice on Wednesday, and I certainly, shall we say, did not have my head about me.

From there, I've descended into madness. Difficulty sleeping because my thoughts are racing. Today, I woke up with a stomach that was certainly not purring with contentment. It was twisting, turning, dancing like there was a midget inside banging on the front walls of my guts, begging to be let out. I know I need to be calm, but every time I think about tomorrow, my heart skips a beat and I feel a little bit like I'm gonna barf.


To some extent, that's all normal. Nothing that I haven't experienced before, and nothing that doesn't go away after, say, the first or second jam you play.

But I feel like I've always had trouble with making it go away. When I play in a game, I keep a running tally in my head of every mistake I make. The more I think about the stupid mistake I made in the last jam, the worst the next jam is. So on and so forth.

Cho mentioned something at practice not too long ago, something that the team's old coach Maria used to talk about. I remember hearing her say it, if not the exact words - every jam is its own jam. Every jam, you start out 0-0 against the other team. Every jam is a new opportunity for you to do your job.

I've had such trouble remembering that. When I don't remember it, I turn into a train wreck out there, visibly getting angry at myself when I don't see a jammer, swearing like a disgruntled hobo when I miss a block.

In the spirit of what my teammates have done (see recent posts by 9 Pound Hammer and Cho Cold), I am setting goals for tomorrow, my first bout with BCR.

Tomorrow, I, Mary Helley, commit to the following:

1. I will be aware of my mental state. I refuse to overanalyze everything I do on the track looking for a mistake. If I do something I know was wrong, I will correct it if I can. If I can't, I will put it out of my head until it's time to sit down and unpack what I learned over the weekend. If I find myself freaking out, I will force myself to take deep breaths. I will not allow anxiety to rule the day, because I am prepared for this.

2. I will not eat crap before the bout. One of my Derby Resolutions this year was to be more aware of what I was putting into my body because the quality of the fuel determines the quality of the performance. Sometimes, I have been damn near determined not to listen to that, but tomorrow is not a day to play fast and loose with dietary rules. I am NOT going to eat fast food before I skate. In fact, I'm starting off tonight by eating some carbs. Tomorrow, I'm not skipping breakfast, I'm packing a lunch to eat in the car, and I am going to make sure I have something to eat at halftime - a protein bar or a banana, whichever happens to be available.

3. I will not allow myself to get dehydrated. I'll admit it: I get really excited during a bout. Even when I'm sitting out a jam, I tend to be on the sidelines screaming at my teammates. I forget to drink. And at no less than two of the three bouts I played last year, I got ridiculously sick because I was dehydrated. After Panama City, I had a migraine the size of Florida and puked for a good hour and a half before I could hold down some ginger ale to settle my stomach and get to sleep. After playing Pearl River, I had another migraine that I couldn't get to go away no matter how much I tried - and I had to drive an hour home afterwards, half blind because of the splitting pain in my head. Not gonna happen tomorrow. I'm starting on the water now, and drinking nothing but for the weekend. Maybe overzealous, but it's the most horrible feeling in the world to be that dehydrated after a bout when you're already exhausted.

4. I will not allow myself to get crampy. Last year, I struggled and struggled with muscle cramps. I could never quite get to a point where I didn't start cramping at some point during a bout. Tomorrow, I'm going to make sure I get plenty of potassium to start (either from my potassium/calcium/zinc supplement, or from bananas). I'm going to make sure that I don't skimp on stretching because I'm nervous.

5. I will not allow my temper to take over. I know this kind of goes along with the first thing that I said, but it's important enough to me to separate them out. I get frustrated at bouts sometimes, especially at bouts that start getting aggressive. And then I get angry. And then I turn into Helley Red Haze who isn't paying attention to anything but how pissed off she is. Tomorrow, I'm going to remember something about that part of me: she's not productive. I can get mad later if I need to. I can vent on the way home if necessary. But for one hour and twenty minutes, I have to keep my head on straight.

Going into my second season of roller derby, I've never won a game. I've never even been on the winning side in a mixed scrimmage. And now I'm skating with a team that had a pretty damn good record last season.

If we lose tomorrow, I'm not going to be heartbroken, though I want to taste a win. The first one will inevitably be the sweetest. What I want more than anything, though, is to know that I overcame the neurotic over-analytical nerd in my head that wants to criticize every move mid-bout.

The only person who can prevent me from picking up that win is me. And after writing all this about my particular version of bout-day nerves, they all of a sudden don't seem so unconquerable.

Losing It

It's bout season.

There's not much room to think about anything but when the next one's happening. Learning from the mistakes you made the last time you skated. Fixing your screwups. Learning new strategies.

This is the payoff. I've been with BCR through the entirety of an off season now, and now it's time to take all that hard work onto the floor. I'm proud of my team. We've worked hard, and we've trained well. I'm eager to see what happens when we put it all together and play other teams.

I've been extremely focused on the upcoming season. It's part of who I am to be driven. To want to do whatever I do very well. Joining a team like BCR, that's a tall order. It's taken all of my energy to train through this off season, and I like that. I want to be someone the team can rely on to handle her business on the track. I want to be an asset, have trained very hard to be an asset.

I found out today that in April, the whole BnB team is getting deleted from the international roller derby name roster at Two Evils. A couple of my former teammates (two of my three derby wives, in fact), messaged me about it today. They were really upset - it's like losing a part of yourself. It's a reminder that the team we worked so hard for is dead. There is no three second recovery for what our team went through.

Flash back to eight months ago, July. The inevitable explosion hasn't happened at BnB yet, but tensions are rising. We start a typical practice with another annoying skill drill: side step down one line, sprint to the other side of the rink. Sidestep down another line, sprint back. We do this for ten minutes at least - it seems like forever. I break a bit of a sweat, but mostly I'm just bored.

Next up, after we stretch, it's time for an endurance drill. It's just your typical 25 in 5; it's ubiquitous in derby. Sometimes it feels like we aim all our endurance training towards passing this one test.

The rink is hot. The air conditioning at Looney's never did work well in the summer, and it feels almost as humid in here as it is outside. Like you're swimming through the air. There's a nervous twitch in my stomach as I take the line. This drill always makes me nervous, almost sick. I know it's the one thing that would keep me from playing. Everything else on that test, I can do, everything. But the 25 in 5 is always a crapshoot.

The head ref (my husband) blows the whistle. We're off. I focus in on trying to pace myself and I agonize at how tired my body feels after only five laps. By fifteen, I'm slowing down. By twenty, my shins and calves are cramping so badly that my crossovers resemble limping. When I cross the line at 25 laps, my legs are noodles. I don't even have the leg strength to stop properly, so I drop to my knees, skid to a stop on the floor.

My heart is pounding. Sweat is pouring off my body, and I feel so hot that I'm having trouble not passing out. I'm panting, my breath sounding like loud, embarrassing gasps.

4:54. I wasn't the last to finish. I made it with six seconds to spare.

That, at BnB, was my accomplishment. Make it through the 25 in 5. Yes, I told myself, you may be a total wreck afterwards, but you passed the damn test. And that's what matters.

At least that's what I told myself. But when we took on PRRD a few weeks later, it seemed like a lot more than that mattered. I was one of the lynchpin players of the team, one of the only people who understood and cared about playing pivot. The team captain. I had to be in for a lot of jams. My team was depending on me.

I was exhausted before the first half was over. My body felt so bad I could hardly focus on putting one skate in front of the other, much less getting strategy together for my team. On top of that, my derby wife got injured and was in the middle of Ridiculously Bad Real Life Shit. To say I was unfocused is a massive understatement, and I felt very responsible for our loss. I was absolutely baffled when my team gave me the Most Valuable Skater award for that bout. It made no sense to me - it still doesn't, no matter how much I appreciate their love.

Derby is as intensely psychological as it is physical; it's a funny sport that way. I've said that over and over again because it's something that is always emphasized in my sport. I can't really speak for other team sports, but I've gotten to know that part of derby intimately. If your faith in yourself wavers, your opponents will sniff it out like a shark scenting blood. Believe firmly enough that you can't do something, and your belief will make it true.

It's not just your own fear, though. It's never just about you in roller derby. Other people's fears can affect your team's performance. I've watched fearful jammers linger in the back of the pack, praying for heaven to open up and give them a way through the pack that doesn't involve being in the sights of the other team's blockers. I've watched fearful blockers miss crucial blocks because they spent so much time calculating whether or not it was the right time to make a move. Hell, I've been that blocker.

What I didn't realize until far after BnB was over was that someone else's fear could affect training the way it did. I was so loyal to my derby wife. Endlessly so, in spite of how she may feel about that now; she wasn't in my head. She didn't understand how I rationalized everything she did because I was her derby wife. I was supposed to understand her.

I think I understand her better now, after I haven't talked to her for almost six months, than I ever did during my first season as a skater.

I think that as a coach, she was scared. We were alike in the fact that, however much we try to hide it, we thrive off the approval of others. If she admitted that she had never coached anything before, much less a sport as complicated as derby, if she admitted that she'd never been an athlete, didn't understand the way that athletes' bodies work, she would have risked that approval. How would the team have reacted to know that the person who had taught them how to skate, who had initiated them into this wonderful sisterhood, hardly had any knowledge about how to coach the sport beyond the basics?

We never got to find that out. But I think that we spent a season crippled by that fear. One of our referees was a former speed skater with wonderful ideas about how to incorporate off skates and endurance training, but my derby wife claimed that she had asked him to help her many times and that he wouldn't do it. I don't know whether that was true or not, and it doesn't matter - but I do know that she spent a lot of time running down his knowledge. What if he had been more right than she was about skating and how to do it?

Derby is a very open community. There's knowledge out there for the taking if you want it, and even a mailing list about how to coach a derby team with a massive archive that covers just about every issue you might wonder about. I begged her to join the mailing list, but she never would. What if she had discovered she had actually been teaching us the wrong thing all these months? What if she had discovered she had actually been focusing us as a team in the wrong direction?

When I started skating for BCR on October 5 of last year, I was a total wreck. I would have loved to blame my bad skating on the fact that I'd been off skates for a month, but I knew that if I were honest, there were just a lot of things I'd never trained for. My endurance wasn't the result of not skating, it was the result of never having done any endurance training, not in the entire year I skated in Montgomery. My lack of knowledge about strategy, my lack of ability in certain skills, the ineffectiveness of my blocks - it was largely a result of never having been trained in certain fundamentals.

It was, truthfully, largely, a result of having a coach who was terrified to admit that she didn't know it all.

I have my current coaches to thank for the skater that I am now. They have helped me unlearn bad habits by filling in the fundamentals I didn't know. Under their guidance, I've pushed myself harder than I knew possible. This team has made me want to be a better skater; it has made me realize that the best thing I can do for my team is to perform at the top of my ability. When I skated for BnB, I sacrificed a lot of my own training time to help newer skaters. I don't regret doing that, because every woman who wants the experience should know what it is to love derby. But I do regret not giving the team my best effort, not even knowing what my best effort felt like.

The last time I skated a 25 in 5, it was directly after skating 40 in 8 (I clocked in at 7:30, my best time on the exercise yet). I finished my 25 in 5 at 4:40, a better time than I made last July at BnB when the 25 in 5 was the only time trial we did. After my 25 in 5, I proceeded to complete a 10 in 3 with a fall at the end of each lap (2:28), and a 5 in 1 (:54).

This wouldn't have been possible at BnB. We were never pushed this hard at BnB. We were never shown the possibility of our potential. We did the minimum requirements of derby, and not much beyond it.

And that's why we lost every game we played last season. Badly.

I don't want to blame it all on her, our coach, my former derby wife. I am always responsible for my own performance, and I won't deny that that's a lesson I could have used last season. But derby is all about learning- about the sport, your team, yourself. I'm willing to admit that I was a poor player last season because I just didn't know.

I have to wonder what would have happened to the team if our coach had been willing to admit the same. Would we have been a better team? Would we have avoided the messy split that happened in late August?

It's impossible to say.

In a lot of ways, I'm thankful that it happened. I'm skating with a team that has never asked a damn thing about all the ridiculous drama that killed Belles. All that BCR has asked of me is my commitment. They pushed me beyond my former limits and forced me to ask myself how much I wanted to play this sport. That I'm rostered for a bout this weekend in Chattanooga is the answer.

The real tragedy in all this is that so many of my former teammates slipped between the cracks. That someone else's fear is keeping them from skating again. That someone else's fear kept them from ever knowing what this sport has the potential of being.

I would change all that, if I could. But short of erasing the past, I don't know the way to do it. It could be that this is another one of derby's sad stories - another instance where one personality soured countless others on a sport that is pure magic in its best form. I don't want it to be. But then, I can admit that some things are beyond my control.

ReForged

My first 'bout' this season was a mixed scrimmage with two other local teams - Auburn vs. Alabama. Auburn lost, and I have to admit, I had my suspicions that we would, looking at the relative inexperience on our team. It was what it was, however, and the experience provided, if nothing else, gave me a few things to think on.

I know I could have improved my performance. I hit my own teammates harder than I hit people I don't know. That's always been the case; some derby girls say that it's much easier for them to hit people that they don't know, but the opposite has always been true for me.

Apparently, I'm too damn polite.

And, thinking it over, it doesn't make a lot of sense. I learned last season that I am extremely Momma Bear protective when it comes to my own teammates. If I feel like they're in danger, I get mad - not just mad, furious. Strangely enough, I guess my mind never made the connection between that and hitting the other team on the track. Instead of just getting pissed off when their jammer gets through, maybe I should focus a little more on making sure that they can't touch my own jammer. Or that when they do, they pay for it.

The scrimmage pointed out to me that I needed to refocus, to concentrate on some things that have been slipping through the cracks. That's just one of them - switching from mostly concentrating on defending against their jammer to concentrating on defending mine.

The issue with how hard I hit... I admit, I don't understand. At practice, I feel like I'm a lot more fearless, like I hit harder and with more accuracy. I don't always (or maybe ever) transfer that practice Helley to bouts. And I can't figure out what the issue is. Maybe it's nerves, derby stage fright, but if that's the case, I haven't yet figured out how to get rid of them. If I could take all that adrenaline and channel it for good, then it wouldn't be a problem. But the first time I took the line Sunday, my knees were practically chattering together, and I'm not sure that distracted nervous energy ever totally went away.

I played mostly pivot on Sunday, and that's a position that I'm pretty used to being in. When I played for Belles 'n' Bombshells, NOBODY wanted that position. People aren't fond of it at BCR. But I loved it. I love derby strategy. I obsess over learning the newest ones, and figuring out how to bend the rules to your advantage. The beauty of a well-played strategy is thrilling to me; I know I'm not the only person on my team who feels that way, but the newer players especially are still in that stage where strategy is a little too much. There is So. Much. Going. On. in a derby bout that it's hard to even think about strategy when you first start.

I really felt like I sucked at it Sunday. I used to love playing pivot, and it was one of the only positions I really wanted to play. That was at least partially because I was being told I wasn't really good at anything else. But Sunday, I found myself wishing I was in the back of the pack playing Power so that I could be the first line of defense, so that I could see everything.

Last season, I never thought I could be good as Power. Admittedly, that wasn't just my own perception, but it was also being fed to me through my training. This season, I feel like I'd rather be at Power than anywhere else.

I'm having to re-grow as a Pivot, and that is something that's a little... uncomfortable. I admit it. But I know that I was chosen to play as a Pivot for a reason, and I'm honored that my coaches felt like I could handle the position. This season, I'll be playing as the first and last line of defense for my teammates.

More than anything else, Sunday solidified that the old Helley, BnB Helley, is dead. Each off season offers an opportunity for a skater to become someone else, and that's just what I've done. Harder, better, faster, stronger, to borrow a line from one of my favorite songs.

Now that I think about it, my mentality feels suited to both Power and Pivot, it's just a matter of taking the power that I know I have. I can handle the roles, and plainly, my coaches believed that I could. Now it's just time to remind myself of that as bout season starts, as we gear up for our first bout on the 19th.

So, for whatever that scrimmage was, no matter how much certain aspects of it frustrated me, both on a large level and a personal level, it did teach me some new things. Some very useful new things.

Making Yourself Better... for Who?

I'll tell you a secret about me: for most of my life, I have been hopelessly insecure. We're talking self-effacing to the point of neglecting my own needs because I don't think they're important. There's a million reasons for it, but the purpose of telling you is not so I can sit here and psychoanalyze myself.

When I started skating for the Belles, and especially after I became the Captain and primary pivot for the team, I had confidence that I could handle it for one reason and one reason only: because I almost always consider my own needs last, that makes me the consummate team player.

That was how I handled it during my first season as a skater. I devoted a lot more time to raising up the newer skaters to get them ready to bout than I did to improving my own skills. The team knew that I would teach them what I knew, and they knew that even if all they needed was a shoulder to cry on or someone to vent to, I'd be there for that too. I had a lot of teammates tell me that when it came to bout time, I was one of the most protective blockers we had, and that I was "the only one" helping them through the pack.

I guess that's just me; I value every one of my teammates to the point where I will do anything to protect them in the pack. Even as a pivot, I'll drop back to the back of the pack if nobody's helping the jammer. I'll try to run interference and sacrifice myself, taking blocks to keep that blocker from hitting my jammer.

Since I've transferred teams, that hasn't changed. One of my favorite things about roller derby is that it's this sisterhood, this family. BCR has that same ideal of team, and protecting your teammates, that I was scared I would never find after Belles went under. But this is roller derby; this is what we do.

I started skating with BCR (again) on October 5, 2010. Doing that, I quickly realized that I would be one of the weakest links. I was slow. My endurance was terrible. Things that my other teammates could do in their sleep, I didn't have the faintest clue about. That put me in a position I wasn't used to: how was I supposed to help people if I was at the bottom of the totem pole?

I learned an important lesson, and I learned it quickly: if you don't improve yourself, you're not any damn good at helping your team. How can I help a jammer get through the pack if I can't even keep up with the pack? How can I be aware of what's going on if I'm focusing on how much my muscles hurt, or trying to catch my breath?

I knew that I would have to get better as an athlete to play with my team. Why would you put someone on the roster if they can't keep up? For that reason, I've undertaken what I have; I've gone to more practices per week than I ever had with BnB. I've even started working out on my own when I'm not "required" to by a team practice.

This is a big deal for somebody who was never able to consider their own progress important on their last team. But it's made a big difference. My body is stronger, and more able to withstand what my team asks of it. My hits are better. My times on endurance exercises are improving. I don't run out of breath, and my leg muscles take a whole lot longer to turn into jello.

With that comes a whole new world of possibilities: if I pivot for BCR, I won't have to run the pack medium slow if I don't want to. If I want to chase a jammer down, I've got a lot better chance of getting her now. If I want to protect my jammer, I'm more stable, which means that I'm a more likely distraction or object of frustration for somebody who really wants to knock me down.

But it's been a revelation. I didn't get here by focusing on other people. I got here by working on me first. Without working on me, I wouldn't be of any use to my team, because I'd still be struggling.

I am by no means a perfect skater. But I've improved vastly in three months with BCR, way more than I thought possible. The best part is that it's a continual process. Now that my body is stronger, I can work on honing my instincts, understanding when to block without over-analyzing, understanding how to direct a team like this if I ever end up playing pivot again.

Maybe as important is the fact that, without even intending to, BCR has taught me something important about me, and about how I live my life. I've always thought it was selfless to put others before yourself. It is, but what I never wanted to realize is that it's kind of stupid to always put others before yourself. Doing that allowed me to develop bad mental habits; it allowed me to continue indulging in a mindset of total insecurity. It allowed me to continue devaluing myself to the point where I never worked on my own derby skills because I subconsciously didn't think I was worth it.

But I am. I haven't overcome the things I have in order to just fester at the bottom of the heap. I love this sport. I love my team. And the real sign that I love my team, the real selfless act, is the length that I will go to improve myself for BCR. The saying goes that you're only as strong as your weakest player. BCR has inspired me to eliminate my own weaknesses. Not just physical ones- mental ones too.

Speed can be improved. Endurance can be trained. New skills can be learned. What I think is truly priceless is the way that derby makes you into a better person. A better person for the benefit of others. We should all live our lives that way.

Derby Resolutions, 2011

I remember thinking in December of 2009 that I was in a vastly different place, derby-wise. I had just begun training as a skater with Belles 'n' Bombshells. I had just gotten a derby wife. My derby wife and I had spent New Year's Eve together, with our respective significant others. I was very happy. As I've noted, things changed very drastically in 2010, but when the year started, I was in a very good place. I was very comfortable with my derby life.

Right now, I think I'm happier - and wiser. Yes, I lost my first derby wife, which is something that I will always in some senses regret, no matter how badly I feel it turned out. However, a lot of people who came to mean a lot to me during the course of that year with BnB are still a part of my life. I love them just as much now as I did when I first met them - my two wonderful derby wives, Malice, Zelda, DT, Slim, Moth, Delirium, and my sweet little sisters Mystique and Reaver. We may not be skating together (except for Slim and I), but the happy memories aren't ever going to go away.

But I'm also in a much better place as an athlete. As I've mentioned over and over and over again, Burn City Rollers have shown me something entirely new from what I knew about playing derby. They've shown me a whole new level of hard work, dedication, determination, and athleticism. I love where I am, even if it might be a little lonelier than it was this time last year.

I was afraid, when BnB folded, that no matter where I went, no matter what team I skated for, I would never find another team that made me want to be as good as I could be. I was luckily wrong. I love my new old team. I want to be the best skater I can possibly be, and I can already tell that I am well on my way to breaking barriers that used to be impossible, unconscionable to even consider breaking when I was the Belles' captain.

That having been said, I wanted to share my Derby Resolutions with you. I've come up with three goals for this new year, three goals that I think will make me the best skater I can possibly be, and three goals that I hope will show my team just how much it means to me to have a place among such talented skaters.

They are:

1. Keep working on my endurance, no matter how much it hurts. I've discovered since BnB folded that my biggest problem when it came to bout time was endurance. I used to skate my 25 in 5 and struggle through it, hassling for breath and nearly puking at the end of it. That has changed drastically since I started skating with BCR. My speed has improved. My cardio endurance has shot through the roof. And my lactic acid tolerance has even improved to a point where I'm not finishing every time trial in total agony.

But I can still do better. BCR is one of the most athletic teams I've ever seen. And that challenges me. I know that I can be faster. That my endurance can improve. And that makes the pain worth it. The aching muscles, the sweat pouring out of ever pore... it's all worth it in the end. No matter the pain, I'm going to keep setting up challenging workout weeks, and keep sticking to my goals.

2. Learn to quit over-analyzing hits and just trust my instincts. I've said previously in this blog that during the BnB days, I was almost taught to be a passive hitter. Conserve your energy. Hit only when you know it will be effective. That led to me over-analyzing every single hit I thought about making, and ending up, overall, being a very passive blocker.

No more. Since starting with BCR, I've learned that if you have the right technique and the right training, hits don't have to sap all your energy. All you have to know is how to do it, and then trust your instinct to tell you when to go. This is probably the hardest goal on the list for me, because I'm very much more mental than I am instinctual. But I can learn. I know I'm a very sturdy skater, but I want to be one of the people who make other skaters wince when they know they're about to take a hit. I know I can do that, if I can only learn to trust myself, and to play more aggressively.

3. Pay more attention to what I eat, because the quality of fuel affects the quality of the performance. This is almost a no-brainer. I have done what I feel is a good job watching what I eat, and paying more attention to calories. But now I want to change the quality of the fuel- more efficient metabolism, and more healthy meals.

What are your derby resolutions for the year? How do you want to improve yourself for your team? Or for yourself?

Equipment Review: Wheels

I got my first pair of real derby skates in February 2009. They were a pair of Riedell R3's, the Tuner package. They included upgraded Radar Tuner wheels in any hardness you wanted. I chose the red ones, which are the second softest Tuners. At the time, I chose them as much for the color as I did for the grip, but since BCR skated on a concrete floor, it helped a lot to have wheels that were grippier than whatever was on those crappy Academy Cobras.

They have served me well. I have used them for well over a year at this point; nearly two, as a matter of fact. I've watched other people wear through their wheels in two months, and still, my Tuners kept on truckin'.

As the saying goes, all good things must come to an end. I was almost reluctant to get rid of the old Tuners, but as long as they've lasted, they're finally starting to lose their grip. On a floor like BCR's, that's a definite negative. Since I came back, I've struggled with maintaining speed and control on our track, which let me know one important thing: the Tuners had to go.

Right now, they're sitting in the middle of my office floor, divested of their bearings. My husband ordered me a pair of Atom Poisons for Christmas, and I tested them out at open skate last night. Before I went, I cleaned and oiled my bearings pretty meticulously so that I could try to get the best possible performance out of my new wheels.

I'm one of the taller rollergirls on our team, and also probably one of the beefier girls on our team, at least as far as leg muscles are concerned. I needed a wheel that I could really dig in with, one that wouldn't slip around the turns no matter how hard I pushed. For me to get as much power out of my stride as I can get, I needed a wheel I could depend on. My derby wife Vixen had gotten some Poisons not too long ago, and loved them. I was hoping for the same luck, but, given that she skates on a wood floor most of the time, I wasn't too hopeful for a repeat performance.

They were better than I expected. Much better. the wheels are soft to the touch; in that respect, they're really a lot like the way my Tuners felt when I first got them. They're supposed to be hybrid wheels, though, meaning that they grip well on slick floors, and give you plenty of maneuverability on sticky floors. That part I've yet to test.

On our slick concrete, I was able to fly like I never had before. I gave them a test run by going proverbial balls out for a few laps, and was shocked at how well they gripped. I was able to crouch down low in the corners, and instead of the wheels slipping, they held, and I could push hard to get the maximum stride.

I also tested them out for a 25 laps in 5 minutes. I easily made the time- that's nothing exactly new, as I do usually make the time. However, this time, it felt different. I wasn't flying when I tested out my speed, just kind of taking it at a pace in between medium and sprinting. The wheels held well, no matter how low I crouched or how hard I pushed. When I finished, the only thing that was hurting was the blister on the bottom of my foot. My legs weren't cramping, and I wasn't gasping for air. No doubt, a lot of this is because I've been working my ass off to improve my endurance since I started with BCR in October.

But a big part of it was that my equipment wasn't working against me. When I can push powerfully, I don't have to exhaust myself with tons of tiny strokes. Instead, I can fully extend all the way through my strides and get the maximum length out of the push before I have to take another one. That was a wonderful feeling.

I also tried some slicing last night, and the wheels grip so well that I was able to slice sharper and faster than I ever have before. I can't imagine what they will do on a grippier track. Stops are perfect: tomahawk, t-stop and plow stop were easy as pie. The wheels have great friction with the track, and they do just what I wanted them to do. Bellissimo!

As I said, I haven't tried these on a different track yet, but so far, I'm extremely satisfied. I hope to upgrade my bearings to Bones next, and see what that does for me. As my wise teammate Ziggy said last night, the skates don't make the rollergirl. But if your equipment is terrible, you won't skate to your potential, because it's mechanically impossible.

Atom Wheels, Test 1: 10/10

Rock and a Hard Place

As I've noted, I do a lot of reading on derby. Today, I was reading the lovely Bonnie D. Stroir's blog when I came across some of her typically wonderful advice. It was this: "Love derby on your own terms. Leave derby on your own terms." It really struck a chord.

I've seen a lot of people leave the sport in just the past two years. Many of the reasons are legitimate: a shattered ankle requiring years of rehabilitation; lack of time to commit to a team; lack of money to commit to a team. I've also seen some pretty stupid reasons, though- having a personal problem with someone and quitting the sport rather than working it out; misinterpreting a teammates' comment and leaving the team over it; not liking the way a league was run, but never making suggestions or offering to help change it for the better.

I want for myself what Bonnie describes. I do love derby on my own terms, and when I leave the sport, as I inevitably will, it will be because I know it's time for me to do so, whether because of my job, my body, or whatever it ends up being. I don't feel very sympathetic for people who leave the sport because of other people, because you should never let others choose for you what you should choose for yourself. You should never let others control your destiny. But what if you didn't have much of a choice?

I know that I've written a great deal already about the dissolution of my last league, but I feel that that single act has had far-reaching consequences. There are lessons that I'm still unpacking from it, the most important of which is that this sport is about the joy and the challenge of competition- anyone who makes it about more than that is unnecessarily and perhaps maliciously over-complicating it. I've felt guilty about very little, until I read that quote.

The whole messy story of Ember's ousting as President and Coach of the league isn't worth recounting in any detail. Its atmosphere was a toxic soup of negativity from all sides, mostly, if the truth is told, spurred by Ember's control of and responsibility for way too much of the league. She put herself under unnecessary stress because she believed none of us were capable of handling the burdens of running the league. And then she turned around and took that unnecessary stress out on us. She really felt like it was our fault. In some cases, maybe it was. But there were plenty of people willing to work hard to maintain the league, if she had only been willing to concede that their ideas had merit.

I don't know why she wanted so much control when it brought her such misery. She admitted time and again that she was stressed and miserable, unable to enjoy skating because so much else was hanging over her head. It seemed, though, to be part of Ember's idea of the President: the President of the league sacrifices untold hours of her day, every day, to keep things moving, to solve problems, and to take the burdens onto her own shoulders. That was one of the biggest disagreements she and I had after I took over as President- I believed then, and still firmly believe, that a league President should do her job, but that her job does not include giving up her entire life for derby to the point that it becomes distracting while she's on the job and starts pulling at the seams of her marriage.

Whatever the reason, her control was what tore the team apart. First, the three skaters who had the worst problems with her left. Once they left, I think we'd all hoped for a resolution. We'd all hoped that, eventually, we'd be able to mend fences and put the team back together. That was before the skaters who left decided to start a competing league. In the very small city of Montgomery, every single one of us left on BnB knew: there was no way two teams were going to work when one was barely breaking even, and fighting tooth and nail to bring in maybe 2 or 3 new skaters every few months.

I say every single one of us; Ember was the exception. I remember her telling us that if we really felt like the other team had such a recruiting and organizational advantage over us, it was because we were weak. Too weak to fight for the team that we loved. It was insulting at the time, and it still is, if only because, knowing the women on that team as I did and still do, none of us are weak. We all shoulder countless burdens in our real lives, and derby was supposed to be the release. The sanctuary. Once the sanctuary collapsed, what options did we have?

We knew what we were facing: the only way that the members who left the team would have come back to it was for us to kick Ember off the team. The problem was that, with Ember being responsible for so much on the team, and admittedly making herself into its central figure, too many people felt obligated. Ember was the person who had first taught them their falls, their hits, their t-stops and crossovers. How could they turn around and kick Ember off of the team that she started? How could they take away the joy of roller derby from the person who had brought them into it?

Those were the questions many people faced when we decided to take our league hiatus. Morale was at the lowest I'd ever seen it by that point. Fewer and fewer people were coming back to each practice, and people had actually started outright crying during drills because nobody could hold in the feeling that this was it. Every one of us but Ember felt like it was over. I often asked myself why she was blind to those feelings. Why didn't our feelings matter to her? Why couldn't she see what we were up against?

Nobody would kick her off the team. We knew that much. Nobody could even stomach asking for that vote. What we did know was that, during the meeting we voted on our hiatus, Ember walked out on our concerns. Before the meeting was even over, Ember told us she was leaving because it was pissing her off, and she walked out on us. That was a clear enough indicator of what she thought of us and our concerns. It was a visceral, gut-twisting slap in the face.

That, as much as any other reason, was why we ended up voting to close the league. With that choice, we said what nobody wanted to say, but there's little point in mincing words now. Facing a potential lawsuit, losing money on practice, with less than ten people on the team and little prospect of recruiting, if Ember wouldn't acknowledge the problems she had created, then our team would fold. In closing it ourselves, we voted no confidence in her- her ideas, her leadership, her stubborn denial. But we also knew the consequences: that she would no longer be able to skate.

I've had difficulty with that part of the moral choice. As I've said, and little of it bears repeating, my relationship with my derby wife was, at that point, beyond repair. We were little more than acquaintances, and she resented my leadership as much as she resented everything else about me. Through all the bad blood, all the terrible decisions that she made and then denied, I never wanted to take this away from her. I never wanted to do the equivalent of saying 'you can't ever play this sport in this state again.' But I did.

That's the bald truth of it, and it's what Bonnie's blog reminded me of. That, for all practical purposes, we had taken away Ember's chance to play roller derby. We took away her ability to leave derby on her own terms.

It's easy enough to say that it was karma, that Ember got the end result of two years' worth of bridge burning in the local area. She couldn't go back to her first team because of the way she'd left it, and because she had too much pride to admit that she'd treated them like shit too. Could she have been honest and forthright about that, I think things might have changed- or they might not have. BCR might have accepted the apology, but said it was too much of a risk to team stability to have her back. I don't know, and I can't speculate.

It was an easy choice for the rest of us to make; we all knew we had options. We could skate with either River Region or BCR, and we knew that with both teams, the doors were wide open for us. They weren't for Ember. We knew that too. The question I still have trouble answering is this: were we selfish? Or did we do what, in the end, was best for everyone? Did we force Ember's hand, or is this, in the end, how she's chosen to leave derby?

There aren't easy answers. The whole thing was unsettling, difficult, and depressing, and I certainly don't deny Ember her anger over not being able to skate again. That, more than probably anything else, is why she told me, the last time I talked to her, that I had "stabbed her in the back." That, in the end, is why she doesn't speak to me- because I'm the easy target. I was the one in charge when the league voted to close. In her mind, I could have stopped it, because in her mind, letting the team have a voice about its future was always a huge mistake, and she told me as much on one occasion. I couldn't run things that way. I couldn't continue to see my teammates suffer.

In the end, I chose to hurt one teammate rather than ten times that amount. But I was their captain, their advocate, their listening ear. I was their pivot, their protector, the person who always had their back. It was my job to take care of them. And I think I'm still having a hard time getting over the fact that the only options I had would have hurt someone, like it or not.

The Burnout Beast?

I read a lot of derby sites. Unsurprisingly, it becomes an obsession once you start the sport: workout blogs, commentary blogs, strategy blogs, drillbook blogs. Oh, and let's not forget mailing lists and social networking sites. People involved in derby have a unique passion for the sport such that everyone who can write a lick seems to write often.

I don't mind that. Roller derby has been one of the overriding passions in my life for going-on three years now. It takes my mind off my day-to-day stresses, gives me a reason to be physically fit, and lets me be around people I dearly love. Not much to complain about, right?

But lately, burnout seems to have been a popular topic on a lot of discussion lists, in particular. I guess it's not so surprising, given that most derby teams are done with their seasons now that WFTDA championships are over. We'll all be taking a break to regroup, train to be stronger, and get ready for the start of the next season. This is the time when burnout creeps in. You're exhausted after a long season, tired of the rigors of training, and probably still aching from injuries that you put off tending just to get through on more practice, one more bout.

I'm not going to pretend I haven't experienced burnout with derby. Strangely enough, though, derby burnout happened for me not because of the physical and mental rigors of the sport, but for what I would call The Wrong Reasons. The Drama Monster. As I've elaborated numerous times already, the demise of my former team wasn't a pretty one. That, more than anything else that's ever happened to me in this sport, made me want to quit. It wasn't worth it- shouldering the load one more day, one more week, until it would all blow over... I just couldn't do it anymore, and I knew that.

It took a month off, a month with absolutely no skating, before I could fully conceive of what derby meant to me. But the only way that worked was for me to experience derby without the constant pressure of being the glue that held the team together.

Right now, BCR is preparing for its winter break, which will last almost a month- from December 12 until January 1. The idea of not having structured team practices for that long comes as something of a culture shock, and not one that I'm really excited about. I'm still working on a lot of physical issues to get up to speed with BCR, and I want to keep going at it, all guns blazing. I want to keep learning from them, to keep learning where I fit on their team, and I hate that I'll have all this downtime. Not skating, as many of my fellow BnB's have discovered, leaves a big hole where you feel like derby ought to be.

When people talk about burnout, I can't say that I don't identify. I guess what I can say is that I identify in a different way. I enjoy the physical pressure. Training is a crucible in which I forge a better skater. I like the way my muscles feel when they burn, because I know they're building. I love ending a workout with legs that feel like spaghetti noodles. I love the challenge of pushing through a drill that I couldn't finish the last time I tried it. I love feeling like I'm making progress, and I even love feeling like every inch of that progress is an inch I have to claw for. For me, like not much else in my life, derby is worth it. I don't care what sacrifices I have to make, or how may times I have to keep trying harder when I screw up.

This physical burnout, it's not much to me. Maybe it's just because BnB's season got cut short, and I was spared the typical March to November grind. But I'll take the physical work. I'll take the mental work, too. Keeping my body and my head in the game is a pleasure, a joy that I appreciate all the more for knowing that my two derby wives can't do those things right now. The emotional stuff? Now that was burnout. Now that I've discovered that derby doesn't have to include all that, I feel like a burden that I didn't choose has been lifted from me. Now, the burdens that I do choose can take precedence.

Frustration Based Training

First, an injury update: I'm extremely annoyed by these damnable shin splints. Dear reader, if you've never had shin splints before, they are one of the most annoying painful injuries there is - sharp shooting pains up the front of your lower leg, or, in this case, up the inside of my lower leg. I was hoping that taking some time off would really help a good deal, and it has. The pain is, at least, not excruciating now. But it's definitely still there.

I've found myself beating my head up against very typical frustration. I get annoyed at my body very easily when it won't do what I want it to do. In this case, it won't let me do the hard training that I need to do to start getting ready for the next season. I had to skip Sunday's skate practice, which not only screws up my attendance for the month, but deprives me of an opportunity to skate, which is just... depressing, frankly. I didn't make any off-skates practices this week, and even though I tried, I would have been an idiot to try to force my shins through hard plyometrics on concrete floor.

I'm trying in the best ways I know how to distract myself from sitting here screeching in my head "WHY WON'T THEY JUST HEAL?!" I've alternately been very down in the dumps about it, and very motivated to train through it. In order to turn off the harpy that wants to just ignore the injury and keep pushing it until I get a stress fracture, I've forced myself to be super-organized about how I'm training while I'm not skating.

Cardio has been the most difficult part. The best way for me to get cardio is by skating, but I don't want to push that right now- what if I skate and make the shin splints worse? That will set me back. I can't run for the same reason- too high impact, even worse for the injury than skating. I can ride our communal bike, which is an acceptable substitute, I suppose. At least it's on wheels. But I've frankly not enjoyed it near as much as I enjoyed biking as a kid. My preferred method of cardio would be swimming, but I've been too down in the dumps to go sign up for a membership at the local pool. I suppose I need to get over that, since it's pretty much the perfect cardio substitute until my shins get better: low impact, something I love to do, and great exercise.

I've divided dry land training into three components, attempting for the life of me to use my obsessive Capricorn ordering skills to produce something productive out of something very frustrating, and frankly depressing.

1) PT/Shin Strengthening. Though, as noted, I took a break on Sunday, today, plus last Friday and Saturday, I began a program of shin strengthening meant to help with the weak ankle muscles that cause feet to pronate when you run (or skate). So far, exercises for my shins have consisted of special stretches designed to prepare the area (as many shin splints can be linked to inadequate stretching), plus walking on my toes and heels, plus toe raises in various permutations: leaning against the wall, as preparation to take a step, and toe raises that push the ankle outward and keep the ankle from pronating.

I'm still experiencing shin pain, but I can feel definite muscle resistance and burning (the good kind) when I do the exercises. I notice that when I try to flex my feet upwards, I experience a lot of inflexibility, and suspect this may be part of the problem with my running gait- maybe my skating stride too. I have no complaints about the program I've adopted to ease the injury and strengthen the area- after all, I haven't even been at it a week yet. I'm also taking Aleve regularly, and icing my shins (not as often as I should). In a week, I hope to update a bit more with some details as to how the program of treatment is working.

2) Core Training. If I were to describe my approach to this injury, it might be "Killing Myself with Core Training." However, considering how important core strength is for derby, I figure if I can't work on things like explosive power, agility, and skating endurance, I can amp up my core strength for when I'm able to return to skating. Again, I took a break on Sunday, but otherwise have been core training Friday, Saturday, and today. A brief list:

25 crunches x6 different types (straight, to each side, obliques on each side, and hip lifts); straight leg lifts; side leg lifts; Rover's revenge (both quick and isometric); step-downs; and different styles of leg lifts, like scissors, flutter kicks, hundreds and just straight leg lifts for anywhere from 30-45 seconds. I've also thrown in pushups, planks (basic and side) and supermans for good measure.

I've always known that my core strength wasn't as good as it needed to be, so in retrospect, it's not such a dumb idea to do this instead of exercises that always focus on my leg strength. My legs are pretty strong- but the core above them sometimes not so much.

I'd love to say I see results, but I'm not quite sure I do. My abs feel about like they usually do- that is, I can feel some strength and definition, but there's definitely a layer of padding over them. I've lost almost 10 pounds since starting to monitor my calories seriously, but it's hard to notice the difference sometimes, which is a bit discouraging. I don't know how to measure the results of core training, in any case- my guess is that it will best be measured by the difference when I actually skate and have to use my core to hold me in place, in which case I plan to exercise my core fairly relentlessly over this week, and if that gives me results when I'm back to skating, then I'll keep doing so. Crossing my fingers.

3) Resistance Training. I'll be the first to say that I've never been a weight trainer. I signed up for a boot camp when I was in derby with Belles 'n' Bombshells this summer (and ended up giving it up after one week, admittedly), which required weights, and I learned some things about it then- namely that resistance training wasn't as bad as I thought it would be, and that maybe I should give it a chance.

My resistance training so far (today is the second day of it) involves basically circuit training with 5 pound handweights. I'm starting off with small weights for a couple of reasons. First, as I mentioned, I'm a total amateur with weights. Second, because of injuries to my wrists from six years spinning flags in marching band, I've got cubital tunnel syndrome, which makes my wrists weak, and gives me a little difficulty gripping things. I don't want to start off my weight training too heavy and end up dropping something on my toe.

The list goes in a circuit like this: flat chest presses, flat chest flies, shoulder presses, lateral raises, front raises, single arm row, upright row, shrugs, hammer curls, concentration curls, kickbacks, squats and dumbbell lunges. Today, I'm planning on 30 secs. per exercise, and 3 reps through of the circuit.

Again, I don't know what the difference would be. When I first tried these exercises on Saturday, I could definitely tell that my body was unused to weight training, and that many of the muscle groups I was exercising were underdeveloped. I'm planning on continuing to weight train a few days every week, even when I get back to skating, just to keep those muscles developed. A stronger body means a stronger skater.

Overall, I'd love to say that all this exercise has made me feel awesome. In a lot of ways, it does; I'm pretty sure I've mentioned before how singularly AWFUL my discipline has been in the past when it comes to actually keeping a detailed workout plan, and sticking to the things I plan to do. The very idea of off-season endurance training, and improving enough to skate with this wonderful team next season has made that a piece of cake. In that way, I'm impressed with the results: I've been able to keep a dedication to getting fitter and monitoring how I treat my body like never before. And the mental results have been pleasing as well- admittedly, I feel good about myself when I exercise, and I feel good when I clock in under my calorie count for the day, and I feel good when I step on the scale and see that I've lost weight.

One thing I HAVE discovered is that the years of depression and sedentary moping haven't served me well. I can't believe I was able to get through ONE season of roller derby with this poor body conditioning, total lack of strength and endurance. That in itself, I think, speaks to my want to play this sport, and my determination. But although roller derby is deeply psychological, it's also deeply physical. The body WANTS to be well toned and kept to play a sport like this. When you know that the machinery won't fail you, then the philosophy behind that machine has less chance of doing so as well.