Tuesday, March 15, 2011

It's not about how many times you get knocked down, it's about how fast you get back up...and repeat until it sinks in your head

The title of this week's post could almost pass for a title of a song by Mogwai :) For those who haven't heard Mogwai you have no idea what musical goodness you're missing out on, do it!

The write up that Cherry I did for the Rouse Hill Times appeared in the paper. Only downside was they chopped most of what we wrote and they put the pic of me half dying during a drill instead of someone actually skating. It's a great feeling seeing our league given some exposure though. The editor for the paper wants to actually keep track of our progress, so who knows we may overtake the sport section one day! Here's the article:


It's funny how one little incident can make everything else spiral out of control. It's only now that I've managed to bring it under control. It was at training a week and a half ago, we started doing marching drills and those of us that wanted to could try and cross one leg over the other to practise the cross over motion. I thought I'd give it a go. Right on the very first attempt, I didn't do it right and I overbalanced. I knew right then that I was going to stack and stack it I did. As I fell it felt like my right leg ended perpendicular to my ankle, needless to say the pain kicked in right away. I'm a pretty mellow person but something snapped inside in me while I was lying on the middle of the court with my ankle iced and elevated while everyone else was skating around me. The more it hurt, the more angry I got with myself. Cherry tried calming me down and was telling me not to be so hard on myself but had no luck, she even threatened to kick my injured ankle as a joke (at least I think she was). I was so pissed off by that stage that if she had done it I would have kicked her back with my left leg and then live to regret it :)

Thankfully my ankle wasn't broken and I managed to get myself over to the sidelines but I had to spend the rest of the session with my leg elevated and iced. While I punching the wall in anger all these thoughts were swirling around in my head - 'I was so crap at derby, every time I tried something new I'd fall down and injure myself, at this stage I'd be 65 before I'd be able to bout, maybe I wasn't cut out for derby, frustrated that I wasn't progressing fast enough, I'd fall even further behind everyone else now' etc etc. To their credit everyone was nice and checking up on me. Once training was over I hobbled to the car and a certain smart arse said 'now you'll have something to write about in your blog', bloody smart arse :)

My mood didn't improve when I couldn't last the training session on the Monday and that was off skates due to my ankle hurting too much. I decided I needed to get out of my negative mindset so I thought I'd get some inspiration from Lisbeth Salander so I went to the movies and re-watched The girl who kicked the hornet's nest. Without giving away too much of the movie she goes through a lot of rehab work from her injuries. She didn't sook about her injuries, she got herself better and went on to kick arse in her usual fashion



I walked out of the cinema thinking hell yeah I can do this. A couple of falls weren't going to stop me. The plan was to last as long as I could at training on Friday night as my ankle still wasn't right. On the way to training the weirdest thing happened. I was overcome with this paralysing sense of fear about skating. I've never felt this way before so it freaked me out. I think it was because it's been twice now when I've tried something new and twice I've stacked it and injured myself. I was worried it was going to happen again. I felt like I was going to throw up, so I chickened out and sat out the training session and felt pretty stupid.

Another problem was that I was worried that I'd continue my bad habit of giving up if it all got too hard that I pushed myself too hard and made the situation worse. I took a step back and analysed the situation and came up with the following solutions. I'm hitting the reset button and starting over again. Due to my injuries I've spent more time on the sidelines than on the track so I'm not at the same level as the freshies I started off with. When I go back to training when we have certain training drills I'll train with the freshies who are still at the learning how to skate stage and work my way up with them.

Next up it's plain to see that roller skating and all the moves that go with it aren't coming naturally to me as it is with others. I've come up with a plan for extra training on my own time and build my confidence up again. My good friend and fellow teammate Mon and I are planning extra training sessions at Skatel on Saturday morning's so little kids you have been warned :P

My ankle is still swollen and it still hurts. I'll be booking a doctor's appointment and get it checked out, hopefully it'll be alright in time for training next week. So folks it's been bit of a bumpy ride the last week and a half but you can't get rid of me that easily, besides I still need to knock someone down on their arse at training :) I can't wait for the day when I finally pull off a successful crossover without stacking it or injuring myself, just try wiping the grin off my face :)

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