Today some of us are traveling five hours to a city that has a banked track team. We are going to practice skating on their track. This is the first time I have skated with the group since my near-quit last week, and my second time ever on a banked track. I'm nervous, but super stoked.
After an extremely long drive and se time spent lost, I meet the other girls at the warehouse. The place has no air, no power, and no bathrooms. Their banked track barely fits inside the room. It is beautiful. Stunning.
It is me and three other girls from my league. As we are getting our gear together, a handful of girls from a neighboring league arrive. We are all signing waivers and putting on our skates and pads when I hear Kathump-thump. Kathump-thump. I look up and see Val hurtling around the bank. While we were piddling around, she had suited up and bolted to the track. Angie was not far behind. Val and Angie used to skate banked track and they miss it terribly. They are positively gleeful a they shoot around the track. Throughout the day I watch them giggle and play like kids in a playground.
I finish putting on all my gear. My swollen elbow aches under the elbow pad, but that's okay. It feels great to have my skates on again. I find the low point and climb very awkwardly onto the track. Okay. Here I am, up at the top. I drop to my knees and slide to the bottom. Okay. Here I am, down at the bottom. Hmmmm.
Val skates up and reminds me how to get started. I set one skate on the track, leaving the other on the floor, and skate. After I'm going along at a reasonable clip, I am to pick my lower foot up and put it in the track.
Bam! I hit the floor.
It's not that the maneuver is difficult. In fact, it's so not difficult that it is called the 'easy on.' It's just that it is very difficult to convince your foot that it is perfectly safe and natural to leave a stable flat surface, raise up, and land on a bouncy inclined surface while rolling forward. You roll along, one foot up and the other down. All is good, and just as you are about to transition up fully onto the track something in your head yells,"Wait, wait! I'm not ready!" This causes sort of a physical stutter followed by a crash. At least the track is soft and bouncy. All that gets hurt in the fall is my pride.
I have better luck my second try. I get both skates on the track. Now the challenge is getting up to the top of the track instead of rolling right back off the bottom again. I keep practicing. Over the next couple of hours I do a lot of falling, a lot of resting, and some skating, too.
I still have quite a few challenges. I have a difficult time skating up the track. I'm not sure how that is supposed to work - if I'm supposed to quick feet up, or cut that direction. I wind up pushing really hard with my lower foot, which is taxing on my inside leg. This is only fair, however, as my outside hip is taking a beating from pulling myself up onto the track. Another challenge is my fear of the bottom rail. I know you can skate right over it on and off the track, but whenever I approach it I drop to my knees in fear of tripping and planting my face. My most troubling challenge is that when I'm on the bank, my feet feel like they want to slip sideways inside my skates. I don't know if I need to stiffen my ankles, tighten my laces, or just get used to the feeling. All I know is that when I pick my foot up and put it back down, all my weight lands on the side of my foot. I roll my ankle more than a couple of times, which is never good.
By the time I'm ready to go, I can skate twice around the track before losing it. I can start at the bottom and make it ALMOST up to the top of the track but not quite. I can skate off the bottom of the track without freaking out and making myself fall. When it comes time to take pictures, I'm able to stand at the top of the track without clinging to the top rail for dear life. All in all it is a successful day.
I do manage, not once but twice, to smash my sore elbow on the bottom rail. Even through the pad, the pain is enough to make me see stars for a second. How do I always find that bottom rail when I fall? It's the only part of the banked track that is hard.
It's been a fun day, but I must leave. The other girls are staying the night and skating tomorrow. I'm envious of them. I'm not just jealous that they will skate tomorrow. I envy their camaraderie. The three of them drove up in the same car. They will no doubt go out tonight and will drive back tomorrow. I would have loved to have that time to get to know some of the other girls. I'd love to build that kind of deep friendship for which derby is known, to get goofy and crazy with like minded girls. It's my nature to be reserved with people for a while after meeting them. Any time I join a new group, it is common for me to feel more like a spectator than like a member until I start to feel comfortable. Now I'm tired of feeling like that with my Derby team. Had I road tripped with the girls, would that have gotten me over that hump? Would I have been able to push through my shyness and actually feel like I belong? Possibly. That is all moot, though. I already miss my kids something fierce. Had I stayed the night away from home, I would just have been miserable with missing them and with guilt for leaving them for so long. So today I leave early enough to pick the kids up tonight. I will later look at the girls' Facebook status updates with a certain amount of longing. That's okay, though, because tonight I'll squeeze my boys and tuck them into bed.
Today my goals were to go more than once around the track, to be able to stand on it without rolling off, and to be able to skate off the track. Next time I'm on the bank, my goal is to master it. That will mean being able to maneuver up and down the track, to skate indefinitely on it at a good speed, to be able to atop, start, fall, and get up, and to be able to take and five some hits. I'm looking forward to it!
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