Abby - my first massive derby bruise

Saturday morning, I got up nice and early, grabbed my gear and headed out to the park to do a little skating. Fun in the sun. When we decided to take our skates off for the day, I decided it would be a nice time to practice my baseball slide. However, having only done that particular fall a couple times, I kinda forgot how to do it, got fairly nervous and ended up falling on my skate. The result: a GIANT bruise on my left leg right under my bum. My first big derby bruise. I took a picture for the archives. And I've named it Abby. Its pretty gross. Multicoloured. I couldn't sit for a while and my leg even got somewhat wollen. I'm very proud of Abby.

In other news, yesterday's practice helped me get out of the funk that my horrible weekend (horrible due to non-derby related things) brought on. There's nothing like a good adrenaline rush to makes to blues go away. And a little rough-housing. Tempting Fate mentioned to me that now that I've made minimum skills, there's a big target on my back. So she tried checking me a little bit and I held my own very well on the blocking front. At one point, I got sidetracked and started talking to someone and she came up behind me and checked me when I least suspected it. My instinctive reaction was to hit her back really hard, which I did and she fell over. However, I fell over too. A lovely 2-woman pile up. I learnt a very valuable lesson. I must limit how much follow-through I put into my hits.

I'm leaving on a little roadtrip to Halifax this Friday, so I'll be missing both the next Sunday practice and next Tuesday's practice. I anticipate my muscles will atrophy and I'll colapse on my jello legs when I next put my skates on.