Running practice and then drinking (alcoholfree) beer

Caught in the action...

For some reason I haven't really been excited about coaching for a bit. I've just felt like I haven't been progressing and I'm just spending time on others. I know it's not the way it is, but sometimes it just feels that way...
BUT for some reason everything changed when I went to Montpellier and coached with Fenix and Pooky. I realised I acctually LOVE to coach and that it is superduperfun to see how everyone progresses.
I am one of those coaches that will yell at you to get better, I will make you skate for the entire three hours if we have a three hour practice... Yesterday we had a three hour practice - and my amazing leauge skated hard for three hours! I felt when our A-team skated against Crime City that we all needed some more endurance and also to work on our footwork, I figured if that is what the A-team need, then it's probably what the rest of the league need too... So skills and footwork - with mixed in endurance was what we did... For three hours... And almost everyone lasted the entire practice!

We might look crazy but we smell good

We have a bunch of girls that jus passed their minimum-skills a few weeks ago, and they are all looking stellar! I am EXCITED to coach everyone in our amazing leauge! Yay Stockholm Rollerderby, we ROCK!

After practice we sprayed some "smell good" on, washed our wrists and hit downtown Stockholm... Well, a few of us did, some other people hit up the pizza place, and that was probably smarter... After an (alcoholfree) beer I was just too tired to even think and hungry as a wolf, since I hadn't had time to eat before practice, so I just had to go home... and so I did...

Kix, Salivet and Becky....

Stockholm rollerderby vs. Crime City Rollers: PART 3

Our Fresh Meat came and cheered us on!

Third time is a charm, whatever that is supposed to mean, this is called part three, since it's the third time Stockholm and Crime City play each other.....
So the first full WFTDA sanctioned bout in Sweden happened yesterday. Stockholm and Crime City have done lots of firsts, and it's about two years since we played the first bout in Sweden... In Malmö - and at that time me, Loony and Firebird all played with Crime City, and now we play with Stockholm, both amazing teams, and I'm so happy to be a part of Swedish rollerderby!

I been sort of not into derby lately, I've acctually honestly thought about retirement, I've just felt like I don't have it in me. But after this weekend I do feel much more positive and I remembered why I love rollerderby... I still have decided to re-prioritise some things... Life will rule rollerderby and not the other way around! Yesterdays game was fun, I wasn't prepared for it to be as much fin as it was and our off-skate is freaking HILLERIOUS, we all do the off-skate and then randomly starting to sing "My Girl" and half of the team don't really know the lysrics, but we fake it really well...

This is how much fun it is to talk about line-ups before the game...

We won yesterday, and the game was a nailbiter, it was our first game with the new rules, and we had one player foul out, in the last 10 min, I guess it could have been worse. We are still playing rollerderby, and as long as we keep it legal, the changes aren't that crazy different... Oh, and I got MVP and it really meant a lot to me, thank you CCR, and thank you STRD for helping me pushing myself and being a part of something that is amazing, and sorry I've been pissy and difficult lately...

I also wanna give out Fresh Meat an extra shoot-out for coming down and cheering us on, we needed that extra love!

I love rollerderby Sweden, you guys are awesome, I love the hard work we put in together! Amazing!!

My really cute MVP award!

And I do admit I love my A-team a tad extra, what is there not to love after seeing them sing karoke or dance at the stage in sports bras? Seriously! I must say I miss Husse, with her in the crew we knew we would win the afterparty, she's an animal... (and she was good to have on the track too)

Lets continue work hard and have those stupid laughs together..: and the drive to play great and amazing derby (and it feels good when we win too)

Karoke afterparty... and seriously... me and Becky do NOT sing... Amy is the star!

STRD Allstars team meeting

Our Allstars are all moooodels..... 

So another day with no practice, so we had a team meeting instead. I love my team, everyone are so sweet and silly, we also have a few new additions to the Allstars, that I hope will work out really well. It feels like the season hasn't really started yet and people are just done decompressing from last season...

We are playing Crime City on Saturday. That will be fun and also my last weekend trip in quite a few weeks.

Don get me wrong, I love to travel, but it's really tiering, and I wanan be home and cuddle!

Look HOW excited we are... probably need less cupcakes and more beer?

South 'n Roll Camp in Montpellier Day TWO

Sunday we ran a three hours of practice - mostly pack-drills... since the previous day we had worked on more induvudual work... and since we all know that rollerderby is a team-sport it's important to get all those induvidual skills into the your packwork... and so we did... and it was great to see how many opf the girls already were using things we had taught them the previous day.
We kept on havingPooky translating the drills into French and me and Fenix showing it with our non-French speaking bodies... It was a good time!
Lunch was tons of food and that made me SUPERDUPER happy, sicne all we got for breakfast was a pain au chocolate (tha's like a chocolate crossiant) and hardly breakfast for athletes, and made me think about the World Cup in Toronto, when the breakfast was NOT suitable for girls that were about to play 1-4 bouts that day. Eating nutriousious is SO important when you work out and use your body for hours and hours...

Nevermind, we got lot's and lots of yummy food for lunch and after that it was scrimmage time for the girls in the bootcamp... It was superfun to watch and see how well everyone were doing, using different skills we had worked on during the two days of the camp... I have NO clue if the white or the black team won, but both did great...

And then it was just for me to head back to the train that would take me back to Paris and another night of haning out with my favorite Em.

Trivial Pursuit...

I love quiz games... and I just discovered that you can play TP on Wii... I am not completly down with those handheld damn devices that usually do exactly the opposite that I want... but I am totally down with the game!
Britta keep on beating me... but not for long... not for long.... 

A free day in BERLIN

So on Monday I stayed in Berlin to just hang out with Titty and Anna, and sadly enough Titty got sick... so I had to hit town with Anna and Kosmic... and after almost carting Kosmic off to the wrong airport (Berlin has two main airports) it was just me and Anna running out and in in stores... I tried on hiiiigh heels and then we had some Aisian food before we headed home to Titty who was in bed with the flu. To make my life a little more exciting I missed my flight, since i for some crazy reason had looked on my arrival time in Stockholm and assumed it was my departure time from Berlin. So I had to spend some hard earned savings on a new ticket home, because staying another day was not an option, I had a late night date waiting in Stockholm and a job e next day that enable me to go on those travels...  

Best shoes EVER.... I did NOT buy them!

South 'n Roll Camp in Montpellier Day ONE

Putting the fork together...

So after spending that short, hot time in Paris I jumped on a train to Montpellier toghether with Pooky, Fenix, Bella and Tique. With the risk to come off as very ignorant and clueless, I have to admitt I had NO clue were I was going. I knew I was going to Montpellier but had NO idea where in France it might be.... I googled it to find out that I was going trough almost all of France to hit the town.
We got picked up at the trainstation and taken to the place we were staying, to our horror we discovered that they were smoking inside. We all know how strongly I feel about not smoking, and I can tell you having a cold deos not make it more delightful... Well, well.. we got fed and it was LOVLEY with food, and the girl who lived in the house was amazing, she also gave me some red wine, and in France I'm quite sure it's a law that I have to drink a ghlass of red every night...

Tall Coaching... 

The next day we got up to coach, and we had two tracks an 58 mostly French ladies (I learned later there were three girls from Switzerland there too)... We started with a quite hard-core warmup, went into footwork, followed by blocking... and then lunch, some more contact drills to end the day with more specific juking and jammign exercises.
It was fun to coach with Fenix and Pooky, and it really was a help to have someone that spoke French, sometimes everyone looked at me like I was speaking Swedish (and not English)... It's so awesome to see how everyone took one exercise and used it in the next drill. It's what's sooo rewarding as a coach, when everyone are just pushing themselves and learnign. Everyone looked POOOPED in the end of the day, and so were we, just loooning to get som food into our bellies.
So after showers we were taken downtown to get some Italian food (when in France) and then get escorted to the afterparty... There was rugby on the screen and I watched some of that while drinking my Kriek (true story) and then me and Fenix took over the dancefloor with Barbie Girl... yeah... this is also true story... 

At dinner we realized we are Charlies Angels...

Montpellier by night... 

In Paris - transit

Burgers and red wine... when in Paris.... 

So on my way to coach in Montpellier I spent one night in Paris with my best friend Em. Em has NOTHinG to do with derby, we know each other from back in the day when we both competed in snowboarding... Now neither of us really snowboard anymore, but we are friends for life. She's probably the person in the world that knows me the best! It was great to get to hang out with her and to catch up on what's happening in both of our lives. We haven't seen each other since we went to Barcelona with my mother in May, and as we all know, lots of things have changed since then.
We went out for food, had some red wine, I insisted on the red wine since we were in France, I mean, she lives here, and I don' 't but I like red wine.

In the morning we went to the bakery and got the baguette and the croissant - just like they do in the movies. Back at Ems 17m2 we made coffe and had a mellow and supernice breakfast.

Best friend EVER!

The bread is still WARM from the bakery! 

Say no more...

EROC day TWO

Titty, me, Kosmic and Bananna on our way to the venue

Another day of getting up early - even if it's technically my day off - yaya... When will I get to sleep in? Well, at least not when EROC is going on... and it's exciting enough for me to not mind getting up by the crack of dawn...

Breakfast with everyone before the first "class" that contained two hours of Bloody Mary going over the new rule-set with some Q & A. I enjoyed going thruogh it all, and I took notes in Swedish, thought it might make it more accessable for some of my skaters that are native Swedish. It's interesting when you think about it, how much easier lots of things are in your native languauge and that is also one of the things we touched upon during the weekend, the language barrier... In general Swedes are quite good in English, so we get around quite well, but it probably has to do with that nothing really gets translated ever, who really cares enought to translate something to such a small language as Swedish... There is about a maximum of ten million people speaking Swedish as a first language...
Ah, well.... that was off topic, but Bloody Mary did a great presentation on the new rule-set and gave us some pointers about things that are quite important not to miss out on.
Well, whatever is cleaver, after teh two hours of new rules I headed into a disskussiongroup with WFTDA reps and reps for National Organizations...

EROC ended as always with a HUGE discussion with ALL the attendees... and once again we ended up talking about WFTDA and our National Organizations. I had to stand up and do an impromptu presentation about the Swedish Skating Federation infront of over 100 ppl. Made me nervous...

After that we went and scrimmaged, and it was GREAT fun, black v.s white, and we were about 40 ppl on each team, so we ended up splitting our team to only play one half. I played the first half and got to play with Rotation and Mainey and also Sabo and Bunny from Copenhagen. So it was good times and fun, felt like it was well-deserved after 2 days off siting down... argh... it does seem like everyone are catching some sort of  sickness, Shevil was hiding at home all weekend, and that was sad, because she is one of my favorites... she did come out for dinner ... I am CROSSING my fingers I didn't catch the derbyonic pleauge...

Dinner was with some of my favorite Berliners and Americans and it was classy and vegetarian, I love eating out in Berlin, soooo many options! MMmmm... rollerderby and food.... life is not about to get much better! 

Last BIG discussion!

EROC day ONE

Me and Titty on our way to breakfast... it's dark outside and it's Saturday...

I love how EROC evolve each year... I am very happy to be a part of the ever growing European rollerderby scene. I am not sure how excited I am about getting up at 07.00 my days off work...

I came to represent Stockholm together with our new Chairperson/Leauge President Reddie and our most experienced referee Fluke, both are two people I respect and enjoy spending time with.

First day was getting up early and hurry to the breakfast, say hello to a bunch of people that I like to call my friends (that would be the people I hadn't seen the night before at the welcoming party). It's always nice to see how many we are that show up to shape the future of European Rollerderby...

Say HELLO to Chairman Red... (I wanna star calling her Mao for no reason at all)

The conference started with leagues being grouped together. According to when they were founded : veteran, intermediate and veteran. Since Stockholm was founded in 2007 we ended up in the veteran group, the discussion pretty much followed the theme of what EROC 2013 would be about - WFTDA membership, national organizations, growing and merby.

After that I spent a little time listening to the Social Network System that sponsor Berlin and how they structure their communication. It was quite interesting, but not really sure if Stockholm need another forum...

Bloody Mary doing simple math so we all can understand what she's talking about...

Bloody Mary held a WFTDA talk with member leagues and AP leagues, as usual it's interesting to hear what Bloody has to say since she's going in on her 11th season as a player and have worked with WFTDA since 2009.

Paying attention... 

In the end of the day I was starving and headed for dinner with Red and a bunch of mostly officials (I don't know how this happens all the time) and had AMAZING Pho! Best Pho since I left Seattle!

When finished with food I went over to Master Blasters store Quad and hung out , Stefanie Mainey was fitting people with atoms new boots, I tried them on and they were surprisingly comfortable. And then I went out for a bite with KidBlock and Mainey, before I headed home to Titty and Anna