Hunting a place to skate in - again

So we were promised a place to practice, and we were soooo excited... We planned the summer, and it felt like a gigantic weight was lifted off from our shoulders... and then BAAAM, after two practices we get the e-mail telling us we are not welcome back.
Heavy hearts... heavy hearts... the past week have not been easy, it just fels so unfair! We ahve so many girls that just want to practice, and we just don't have a place to skate. The go-cart hall have been nice enough to let us back in - but we are getting poorer by the practice, and soon we will not be able to afford being there.
It just feels really unfair...

A few things... of today

I'm not really well, I have a cold that seem to linger and never fully let go of me, yesterday Ifelt extreamly bad, but Istill made it to practice that I ran together with Becky Lawless. I have a really hard time not going to practice if I'm able to stand up.
First hour was our intermediate group and we just worked with lots of juking and speedcontrol, and then had the combined pracice with blocking exercises and some jammers hell before the advanced group got to do their thing, and our thing was fun, even if Ijust got to watch with my skates on...

It is SO frustrating to not being able to skate at times, not only because you are running practice - but also because you are feeling crappy and sick. Especially the days when half the teams attention span seem to be limited to 5 seconds...

On the brighter sidewe found out today that we are getting another practice space in the middle of April until July, that is much better and cheaper than our current Go-Cart Hall. I must say I will not miss having to shout intructions over the running engines of 10 go-carts going fullspeed on the track next to our track... Imust say that photos taken in the Go Cart Hall do have some cool grassroot feeling to it... and from all I know - we might be back in the Go Cart Hall again in August... senior non-elite sports for women are not really high on the priority lists....

Another fun thing of today is that it's Alotta Riots B-day... or as we like to call her Aloha! I miss her and I hope she is havign an amazing birthday! You can also find her blog here if you just wanna say Happy Birthday to her...

Gettin ready for London Brawl Saints

In just about two weeks Stockholms A-team will be playing London Rollergirls B-team. It will be great fun and hard work and we been skating hard towards it.

Since we have limited practice time we have done the best we can out of it. The ice-box a.k.a our training facility has been thawing... it is really nice not having to wear three sweaters and a vest and long johns and so on... it's nice to acctually sweat during practice.

We have also parted the leauge into three different levels, so everyone can push themselves and each other on a level that is targeted towards their skill, fitness and/or motivational level. Red being the girls that still has not passed minmum skills, yellow our intermediate girls and blue our most advanced.

So far this has worked out really well, on Mondays we have one hour of yellow and then one hour of yellow and blue overlapping and ending with an hour with just blue. And when yellow has their first hour of on-skate the blue group does off-skate and when the blue group has their alone on-skate hour the yellow group does off-skate... voila!
 On Wednesdays we currently have two hours of red, yellow and blue and the last hour is for the team that is bouting next (so today it will be the team that is bouting London but after we have bouted Londno it will be the team that is bouting Gothenburg), if we get weekend practices we usually have scrimmages... We are hoping for more practice times going into April... so all cross your fingers for us!

Picture by Viktor Johansson

Icebox might be thawing

Halleluja - our practice space was not THAT cold yesterday, it was just cold, but no worse than it was acctually enjoyable to skate. We still could see our breath,  but it wasn’t painful to breath…

So yesterday was advanced practice,  for now advanced practice in Stockholm Rollerderby refeers to everyone that has passed minimumskills, so we were quite a bunch.  It was superfun - I was leading practice and time just went flying. I think there is one of my issues, that I just want to cover EVERYTHING, but I have to tone it down and narrow down each practice to just target a few things.

Since the practice space have turned into a fridge, we have started every practice with Black Widdow, and so we did yesterday, but with a few adjustments, we did the ten, eight and six laps with a partner instead of alone... My main focus of the practice was to work with a partner, not in a huge group, but with a partner.

Yesterday was a fun day of coaching, and everyone seemed really excited, we had about 25 girls on-skates in our advanced group, and I was so happy to see so many ppl work so hard. It makes me happy, both as a coach, but also as a team-mate. It was probably an extra motivator that it wasn't as cold as it has been previous weeks...

I had a great time, and I'm proud of Stockholm Rollerderby and how hard everyone are working and developing... and on Friday we will be taking off to Stuttgart to bout. So Wednesday is our last practice before... I'm starting to get a little nervous... brrrrrr.... hopefully it will be a good match-up! It will be mine and Loonys second bout with Stockholm Rollerderby... 

I am really excited to get to hang out with Titty during Friday, she is one of my favorite Germans… she has promised to spend Fridday showing us Stuttgart...

Nosebleed and more practice...

We were fearing that it would be -14 degrees outside yesterday and that it would put the indoor temperature to way below the 0. But we were "lucky" and it was only a modest -7 or something, so it was practice as usual. Loony was leading practice and we did the usual Black Widdow, and a bunch of partner exercises and ended it with some off-skate and partner streching.... Mondays are our practice for everyone that has passed minimumskills. It is awesome to see that lots of our new skaters are improving so much for each practice... We have three bouts coming up the next two months - first is two A-team boutsStuttgart in two weeks, and then London Roller Girls B-team and least but not last Gothenburg going up against our B-team. It's all going to be EXCITING!!!

I had the pleasure to get one of our skaters wristguards in my face - resulting in a nosebleed.... quite painful... first nosebleed I have ever gotten in rollerderby. I laid down next to the tires and almost cried a little while the blood was dripping onto the rubbercovered black floor... yeah... HOT...  I guess that is impressive - after four years in rollerderby I have never gotten a nosebleed until yesterday. Today nose is tender and it is a little hard to breath through it today, but it will not kill me... (I hope)

Another day in the ice-box...

At next practices we will do a relay kicking balls... (no pun intended)

Wednesday practices is our ''everyone practice'' day and yesterday it was mine and Twisteds turn to run this practice. We started off with a shortened down version of ''Black Widdow'' (starting at 14 laps) it seems to be our current warm-up of choice. Yesterday was only around 4 degrees Celsius in our practice space - so it's all about keeping warm and getting the muscles going. We could see our breath...  I also like that we do some core and general strenght exercises, since we don't have much dedicated off-skate practices.

Then we continued with an excercise that we picked up when we skated with TORD in Toronto - 10 exercises in 10 minutes. It is simple - we all do an exersice for 1minute and then directly change into another, for a total of 10 minutes. Good things to throw in are; skating on one foot, big slaloms, transitions, skating backwards, jumping from foot to foot... ect ...ect... just exercises where you can challange yourself on your own level.
The challange with everyone practices are to find drills that everyone will find challanging without disencourage the less skilled girls and not to make it too basic for the advanced girls.

Later on we did some matching steps, both side by side, and following each other, yesterday we only did it two and two, but one day I hope we can skate a whole row of people on step, it's fun, makes me remember when Deadly Aim used to run practice. It sounds really cool to have a whole row of girls skating on step. We also did ''shopping carts'' and ''truck'n'trailer'', also an old classical drill that seem to be a standard in every leauges practice protocol, it is a good endurance drill, and I like the competative moment to it, if you want it to have.

I really like running practice - adn I think everyone felt accomplished afterwards - of course there is always room for improvement both from the coaching and from the sakters, but I guess that is what we live for. 

Greetings from the icebox...

Me and the almost wife

I really am skating in all this - and I am still a little cold... but you know it's nothing a 2 minute full sprint can't take care of... it was acctually fun, I have felt a lack of urgency in lots of the Stockholm skaters, and today I made them all skate as many laps as they could for 2 minutes. I think most of the girls had fun doing it... and then I wanna do it again in a few weeks... but until then we are gonna work on our sprints a little more, and hopefully everyone will improve...

Todays practice was a mixed bag of blocking, jamming, full sprints and skating backwards and stopping while going backwards...

It was fun to lead practice with Loony - it's been a while since we did that together... hopefully we get to do it again! 

Time to go to practice... in the icebox

Team ''Haaaaappy Donuts''

Today me and Loony are leading practice in the ice-box that I just named our hall... We just got back from EROC late yesterday... and it was AWESOME to get to scrimmage in a heated hall... even if the floor was sliiiipery, but I got to skate a few jams with Heavy Rotation, who is one of my favorite Berlin skaters, so that was good. Actually her and Shevil are my favorite two Berlin people, and me and Loony always end up staying with them, I also got to share the white team with Team Scotland skater Crazylegs, and tyhat was also fun... I bought a pair of new ugly leggings in Berlin... I always do! And I think I will wear them tonight as my third layer in the ''icebox''.
I will later write a blog about EROC - but right now I have to run home! 

Training in an ice-box...

So as I said yesterday, I been sick - and I'm chomping down antibiotics - but I still decided to come to practice yesterday. I took it really chill, and I'm telling you - the place we practice is really CHILLY... brrrr... brrrr.... and the floor is covered by a thin layer of rubber. This rubber tend to turn into some sort of dust - so my skates are covered in this black rubber dust after each practice. Makes me wonder if our lungs look the same on the inside as our skates on the underside.

Sometime it's really dishearteing to practice at the place we do, it is expensive, cold and we have to few hours and to many different skill levels and I feel like we are going nowhere.
But then I think about Gotham, that they for a while had to practice under the a bridge in Bronx (not that I was there for that) and now lots of years later they are the best in WFTDA, and that gives me hope. It is worth to keep on going, because I know there are lots of us that are motivated and want it, and one day the ''Skatehall fairy'' will come to us and say ''Stockholm Rollerderby - we have lots and lots of practices in this amazing hall... knock yourself out''

Beggers can't be choosers, but I am for sure hoping for a better place to skate, but you know what - at least we have a track and we HAVE practices. It be much worse if we ahd nowhere at all to be :-D

Over and out... and back to work! 

My new sport - ice-derby?

It is not really like this...

Damn, so after a month of not skating in the Go Cart hall, Stockholm Rollerderby is back for bi-weekly practices there. And no kidding - this place is freaking cold. Monday was so freaking cold we had to end practice early - but it was also about -5 C outside. Yesterday practice was better, and it was a few plus degrees outside, plus I think we came better prepared/dressed. I surrently skate in two pair of leggings, a long-sleave Helly Hansen, a hoodie, a short-sleave hoodie and a down vest... It probably looks really funny and colorful - but at least I'm not freazing to death... hopefully it will get warmer outside soon. I KNOW, I do wish for snow - but at the same time I wanna skate... ah, those dilemmas!

The really bad part is that when it's this cold - it's hard for girls that have a slight cold to come and take it easy, because it is cold, and if you have a cold, you probably don't wanna get colder...

I must have an extra shoot out for our girls that JUST passed minimum skills, they are all looking really great and are super motivated. It is so much fun to skate with them, and they come to almost every practice. It is very evident that progression correlates to attendance. I remember when I started derby, I never missed a practice, and one time I overslept (I worked morningshifts, and slept in the afternoon) and missed a practice, and I called my coach and cried. Yeah, I was truly obsessed... (craaazy)

Well, this blog was just about nothing - and about that there is no bad weather - just bad clothing choices... For sure this is NOT fishnet weather, I would totally laught my head off if someone came to practice wearing fishnets in this weatehr. Offically CRAZY! Brrr... now I'm gonna go back to working.

No ice - even if it could be... almost

Skating and living in Stockholm

Our Track

So I haven't really written much about skating with Stockholm Rollerderby, mostly because I been really busy with Team Sweden, starting a new job, travelling to coach or just breathing in a spare moment. I just got back from coaching Crime City Rollergirls this weekend, and I am so proud of them, Loony and myself, how far we managed to bring them in only one year. It has been sad to leave them, buty moving to Stockholm has also been a very possitive experiance. Life is full of adventures, and I love to always be on the move, but Stockholm feel very final. This is were I wanna stick my restless roots down, this is a place I want to grow.

Oh, so Stockholm practices in a Go-Cart hall... yeah... one of the big problem has is that we have a really hard time to find a practice space, and now we finally have a place we can have regular times in. We have a go-cart hall that have let us paint and we can practice there twice a week. I know it is not the dream scenario, but it is MUCH better then not having any practices at all. The floor is acctually really fun!
I still dream of our own warehouse - and I probably will until we find one, but so far so good!
I do feel at home in Stockholm, and I am very happy and content that I have moved here, I am happy with my job, I am happy with Stockholm Rollerderby and I think Loony is happy too. And we are REALLY happy to have an apartment that is twice as big as the one we had in Malmö, I think we both are very delighted about that. We  live close to the center of the city and to the subway (yes Stockholm has a subway and that makes Stockholm a real city, that and that there are over a million ppl living here)
Watching WFTDA Championships yesterday made me happy and sad, happy because Gotham won and they looked amazing, and I know how much hard work and determination that was behind that well-deserved win and and sad because I wasn't there, playing or watching. I must admit that I did miss US-derby and Gotham, watching Gotham win. Those girls are so amazing and hard-working! It makes me feel inspired to continue to work hard, skate hard and have hella fun.
But at least Stockholm is now WFTDA AP and we can start working towards world domination ;-).
But I do want to end this blog with congratulating Gotham Girls Roller Derby to their win!