Finally, it was Saturday

I missed the Monday and Thursday skates this week due to transport issues. My Rhian-Taxi had to work, and my Hubby decided to quit his management job to go back to the spanners. As such the company car went, we are for the first time in 12 years without a motor! Tis a strange feeling. However, end of the month = Car Shopping!!!!

So Saturday am at Channel View, nothing to report. I skated, they skated, we are awesome!!

Seriously though. We did the normal warm ups and timed skates. Everyone is using their crossovers on corners now, which is brilliant. We have started doing 5 minutes counter then 3 minutes Clockwise, helps to stop you from building an enormous Left Leg, and its a bit demanding, I have been struggling to get crossovers going the 'wrong' way. However this week they seemed to be easier, still a bit ropey and in need to work, but I feel alot more stable doing them now.

We then focused on targeting hits. Its all well and good slamming yourself willy-nilly into the opposition, in most cases it works. But we have now started to aim. Sounds daft I know and maybe we should have been doing it from the get-go, but we didn't. We are now. We have also noticed, that alot of us, myself included. Close our eyes as we 'hit'. Now am sure this is an automatic response, but we really want to get out of the habit, after all how can you be completely responsible for your hit and ensure its legal if you just throw yourself at someone with your eyes tightly closed thinking 'I hope this works'??

Am not sure if this is me going in, or coming out of a hit. I can promise either way that from my position and  line of sight, you can see its not aimed at all. That we must remedy!!

So lots of smashing each other about, but also some work on our passive blocking too. I teamed up with one of our new members Tara (get to have a skate name) she is an awesome skater already so its just a case of teaching her the finer points of Derby. We where trying to work out effective ways of blocking the opposition and I must say between us, mainly Tara's skills, we have created an awesome CRoC Block. Am not telling you what it is though, I may have to play you in the future!!

We then started doing some starts and stops, seeing how quickly we could get going on the whistle. It then kind of morphed into CRoC learn to powerslide/hockey stop! which was lots of fun, even if my still quite new skates are so stiff they cut into my inside ankles so deep there was blood-juice and pain!

All in all it was a fab training session and I am so happy I actually managed a full 30secs on the Plank, and am pretty sure I could have held it for another 5. First time EVER!

Stay Skating, Derby Love

Rhayfen
xx