Welcome to the dark side of skating!

I have had a few practices already. Enough to know that I love Derby and being a Derby girl, and enough to know that it doesn't fully like me: yet. I have only had one of the four practices where I walked away uninjured and unbruised. Let's see, the first practice I bruised the bone right under my knee it took two weeks to heal enough to wear the pads when I finally got them. The second practice I slipped in a quite humorous way, against the wall and sliced my finger open. Although, at the time, I didn't know I was the one bleeding and proceeded to ask who was. And my fourth night (tonight) I finally got my skates. So of course learning how to skate on new skates, as oppose to rental skates, creates a little more of a learning curve. And my right butt cheek has a nice bruise to show exactly how hard of a learning curve.

But all in all I am enjoying myself and completely enjoying my team. We are a start up team right now which is wonderful news for me. This takes a lot of pressure off of me to be "perfect" for a tryout. Which is good news for the plus size person I am that is relearning everything. I finally have all my gear and am ready to keep practicing and trying.

I was afraid that they wouldn't have pads for big girls like me. But I was wrong. Thanks to 187 pads I have knee pads that fit and protect me. Which is very important in ANY contact sport. There is an awesome skate shop not too far from where I derby at that helped fit me to the right size helmet and pads. I couldn't suggest anything better than having the right style and the right fit safety pads. You have got to protect the joints that let you play.

Practice in general tonight was great, at least for the other girls. Don't get me wrong, I improved over last week with rental skates, but I didn't get to work on the skills. I'm not upset that they get to and I don't, I'm just upset at myself that I am not good enough. I know, I know: keep at it I'll get better. But tell that to my mind that I can't seem to get out of my head. I keep second guessing myself and that makes it difficult to skate with confidence. My plan for the next few days until our next practice is to walk around the house, do chores, and just basically everything in my skates. That way A) I can break them in and 2) can get more confident. I will leave you with something that our founder's son told her. He is a jam skater and very confident. She asked him how he got so confident. And he said. "It's all about trusting your skates."

~ <3 Kiss My Blarney