Speed skating is how you go fast. On a derby track, pushing with both feet, using cross-overs all the time on that invisible oval (outside on the straights, close to the corners), and getting low are the tips we here. When we see girls pushing and taking full, long strides and doing quick runs on the corners, we know she's gonna fly.

"Why oh why am I slow?", I cried. This week I tried switching my wheels for my Blue demons from 2007 season for our concrete practice space. Let me tell you, wheels with miles on them outside doing T-Stops, plows, practicing and kms and kms of miles and miles around Montreal's Formula One Track, and then throwing them on a dusty concrete floor.... well, I wasn't THAT slow, I was at the back of the pack for a long time and just one or two pushes back, until I lost my steam and had to stop and breathe, but it was like I was sliding around the sharp corners of a squished track with tight corners, even hearing the skid of wheels.

I thought, "I must have a molasses curse on me!", because for my entire non-existent derby career I have been slow. Always just two or three pushes behind the pack in speed and endurance drills, working so extra hard that eventually I have to slow up and get lapped from exhaustion by women who are effortlessly pushing their skates along and flying past like they are super-heroes with some ability to float along the floor at super speeds.

Used to, I'd claim age, size, maybe bad wheel choices. Kudos to me for continuing to push and try to my limits and for continuing to train, but how come my brain knows all about how to do things and my body doesn't respond? How can I have good form, good skates, big pushes, and still be slower than absolutely everyone. As Charlotte Bruise-A-Lot in Montreal asked once, "Nia, you skate and push as hard as we do, I don't get why you are slower than us."

Is it all in my head, my natural academia state to be ahead, my natural physical state to follow? or are my feet just slow, my body ineffectively passing through the air around me?

My coach says not to worry. She says that when I master the midget track we practice on, and get my confidence and endurance for skating back ("It's only been a month, yo!", she said), I'll own and be one with the bout track, she said... and then I remember skating as a 'Dita in Hamilton with 9 players, and the few games I played, when I DID keep up and took my hits and gave some... and I know I'll be okay. Next stop, roster in London, and then the travel team. Someday, I'll be up against the 'Ditas to see if I can come back to surpass my Montreal teachers.

I haven't heard back from the weightloss management center yet about their contest, but I hope the derby gods send me someone that can help me figure out what the heck is wrong with me cause it sucks... A lot...to always be last.

Labels: training