WHEN I told my friends and family I was going to attend the Varsity Derby League's recent 'come and try', I was met with a lot of "you're going to kill yourself" and "you can't even skate", but like the stubborn individual I am, I did it anyway.
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The thought of skating at all, let alone skating slightly fast and having to turn and stop, took me back to when I was about eight-years-old. I went rollerskating for a school friend's birthday party. I was useless ending up tripping myself up and my friend's sister-in-law who was holding my hand and helping me around the rink. Confidence was not at a high.
But as soon as I walked into the Queanbeyan High School gym I was met by a welcoming group of skaters and before I knew it they'd kitted me out with skates, a helmet, knee and elbow pads and wrist guards. I would have to be seriously uncoordinated to kill myself with all this gear on but I was still cautious.
It was time to see if I could skate, I stood up and didn't fall over. So far so good, moving slowly with a couple of close calls because I was what skaters call "tabletopping", that is, making myself top heavy by leaning too far forward.
But once I got some handy tips I managed to get a bit of a rhythm going and I was skating, with speed, and not dying, I was so proud.
Our first task was learning the equivalent to pulling the emergency break, breaking using the knee - slowly and softly kneeling onto your knee pad until you come to a complete stop.
At first I almost gave the skaters a heart attack because I put my hands on the floor and was told "never do that, I've seen way too many people lose tips of their fingers because people have run over them". Alright, lesson learnt.
Before I knew it I was braking on my knees and hopping back up relatively quickly, I was actually getting it.
Then it was on to the "plough break", like snow ploughing in skiing, but you have to use your legs to close to doing the splits, force your skates to the floor and come to a stop. I found muscles I had no idea I had - it was painful, especially for someone who is so inflexible she struggles to touch her toes. Once I remembered to stop tabletopping I got the hang of it, once again to my amazement.
I thought to myself "wow, that was a bit of a challenge, what will they get us to do next - skating on one leg?" That's exactly what we had to do, shift all of our weight over to one leg and balance on one skate. Once again I miraculously got the hang of that.
Then it was the end of the skills section and it was time to experience what it felt to skate at high speed. Skate Slinger, an Australian Roller Derby representative and all-round cool guy pushed me around at what felt like at least 50 km/h (It was probably more like 10...). We darted in and out of the traffic and around other skaters and even though we were told it wasn't a race, Skate Slinger and I definitely won.
We finally got to see some real roller derby, the VDL skaters tried to show us slerby (slow derby) so we could try to understand the rules, but it turned into full-on smashing, derby goodness - it was amazing!
Yet another new word and concept was added to my vocabulary: "lerby", after every training session the skaters sit down and say one nice thing about someone because as one skater put "we smash each other, but we still love each other." I was told I was "a natural" and picked things up quickly and was asked if I was going to join, but I'm glad to say I'll be walking without wheels strapped to my feet from now on because surely two hours without stacking must have been a fluke.
