Practice, LCC, skating and HRMF!

So this post is considerably overdue... Given that I am perpetually late in life no reason I shouldn't be here too, right?

Practice a week ago was another step on the road to readiness. Speed Bump started things off with a new endurance drill, 50 laps around the outside of the track in 15 minutes. Unsurprisingly, I wasn't up to it. Both shins decided to transmute to wooden stumps after holding pace with the group for the first 5 or so laps, so I stepped to inside the track to make way and continued to plod along as best I could. Awesome beginning...

Anarchy gave us some hit drills to do, which was all sorts of fun. The hits are coming along nicely, and even our newer skaters which are still finding their legs are encouraged to participate, though they are shown a bit more mercy than those who are ok with being pounded to the track. I am definitely getting more comfortable with the hits and have started throwing a decent hip check in addition to the ever-reliable shoulder.

Once again, practice ended with scrimmage/jams usually 4 vs 4, but numbers varied as people cycled in and out as they got tired. Everyone looks forward to these scrimmages, even if we are on the verge of collapse by the time we begin them. Team/pack tactics are shaping up nicely and we're starting to work as a group rather than scattered individuals.


The day after practice I went to Eugene with Killa'Volt to skate with Lane County Concussion. They are the nearest league and there has been recent communication with them about arranging a scrimmage in the future. Practice was VERY different than what I am used to. Their team has existed nearly 6 months longer than I have been with PMRD and that extra skating time really showed with their team. Their endurance and general skating level was noticeably better than mine during warmups and drills. All of them were faster than me (not the greatest achievement, but still frustrating), and a couple were on par with Speed Bump or Bees Whacks in terms of speed and maneuverability. They were self-coached and I quickly found myself missing the scathing demands, criticisms, and encouragement of General Anarchy. Their positional blocking was great, easily better than a large part of our team, but there was virtually no impact blocking or pushing during their drills. I constantly waited for some serious hitting to start up but it never materialized. Being a guest at their practice, I didn't want to be a douche and start blasting people off their skates, so I too held back and took part in the moving roadblock that was their pack. Very different approach to practice than we were used to, and all good guys, looking forward to skating with them again soon... hopefully in different colored jerseys.


Managed to put in some trail skate time and open skates at Oaks Park this week following the back to back practices. No serious soreness until I went for nearly 4 hours straight on Friday. While I appreciate that others want to see their horde of 10-year olds have a roller skate birthday party, I don't really like having to dodge those same kids while doing casual laps at a seriously reduced pace. Either way though, got in a lot of wheel time, which was needed since this last weekend there was no practice because...


RCR 2010 league finals were at the Expo Center! GnR got a hard earned win over BNB for 3rd place. GnR has some awesome skaters, but seemed to struggle all season to put their talent into the same efforts. The Betties were doing well all game, things were back and forth for a while, but finally GnR got a lead later in the second half and made it stick. Seeing Scrappy Go-Lucky get to skate for the Betties again was awesome though. Since it was a double header next up was the championship bout between the High Rollers and the Heartless Heathers. The Heathers brought some interesting line-ups and obviously wanted to win. The High Rollers were short some of their players (Sully Skullkicker, Madame Bumps-a-lot) but still brought the thunder. Like the bout before, it was a close game with some seriously impressive play from both sides. In the end though there could be only one winning team...

HIGH ROLLERS!!!

Busy weekend and new boots

Wheels of Justice (WoJ) played Rat City this weekend at the Portland expo center in a double header with RCR team good vs team evil. Team evil put the hurt on team good, taking a strong lead early and continuing till the end. Unfortunately, one skater was badly injured and will be out for the rest of the season with a torn ACL. WoJ managed to hold on to a lead for the majority of the bout, taking the win over #5 ranked Rat City, hopefully trading up a spot in the rankings from #6. I was happily manning the Portland Men's Roller Derby booth with Faux Paul throughout both bouts, but managed to get peeks at each bout from time to time. In the picture above taken by Free Will, you can see Demon, myself, and Faux Paul during half time. The team got a deal to rent the booth for the night and despite initial nervousness and some last-minute hiccups in procuring/producing merchandise it was a success. Definitely need to stockpile some merchandise for future endeavors to avoid the panic-sweatshop efforts which lead up to the booth last night. Even without t-shirts or stickers to sell, we made $19 on 2-for-1 buttons Joan of Snark helped get ahold of and nearly filled 3 pages of signup sheets along with handing out dozens of handbills to interested people. Our goal was to get 2 more skating members, and with the positive response we received I would be shocked if we didn't get at least that many. I had lots of fun working with Faux Paul while meeting new interested people and talking with them about joining up. Good times, definitely worth doing again for more exposure and possibly for profitable sales as well with the right items/prices.

Also, in unrelated news, Beki at Oaks Park got the replacement boots for my skates in and had them mounted for me a couple days ago. By some freaky luck, my left boot was trying to secede from the union by separating from where it had been cemented to the sole. Initially I thought that it wasn't an issue, lots of my old shoes have partially torn away from the edge of the sole, but apparently this one was going for the full deal. Sure-grip either no longer makes the old boot in my size or possibly at all, so I got a free upgrade (thx Sure-Grip) to the XL-75 boots, which have a couple features I was curious about now that I have been skating for a while. After picking them up on Saturday afternoon, I was impressed with the new setup. Same plates, trucks, wheels, bearings, and toe-stops as before, but the new boots certainly seem to make a difference. New features include a 'power strap' that helps hold your heel down during tomahawks and toe-stop sprints, a much more cushy ankle/achilles lining, and a more heavily padded tongue with a grippy interior surface so they don't slowly rotate to the outsides of my feet like the previous ones did. Hopefully I'll get to take them out tonight or tomorrow afternoon and see if they feel significantly different.

Since the track was taken over to the expo center, no practice today. We had discussed doing a Portland Parkways event as a team, but several members had conflicts and ultimately the weather didn't want to play along so it didn't happen. Gonna try and get in an extra day of Oaks open skate to make up for it, but it isn't the same. Horse stance has been slow going, kinda boring to just stand there not falling down while your thighs complain. Hopefully it pays off and General Anarchy (who's most recent shirt says Coach Dickwhip, awesome!) gets to find another aspect of my existence to improve upon through creative ridicule and encouragement. We'll see.