i’ve been putting off blogging all week. the shenita stretcher blocking bootcamp tuesday wasn’t very enjoyable for me. i was in a good mood and excited for it, got there early, helped put the track down. girls started showing up before 7:30. before i knew it, it was time to gear up. everyone who was there who wasnt a radical warmed up skating around the outside of the wftda track, but we skate around the whole rink, so that was weird. it felt like we were skating around for ever. i got really bored. i wanted to get into it! liberty lead us in a warm up on the track where we pack up and do what our rotating pivot tells us.
god, skating in a pack with that many girls terrifies me. will it always? whenever we do something like that, i end up in the back, where i’m mostly safe from locking skate wheels. *hangs head in shame*
then we stretched… and shenita still wasnt there. i kind of thought maybe she wasn’t coming, and it’d just be liberty leading a joint practice! she finally showed up though after diamonds. shes so cute! shes smaller than she looks in pictures.
it was a lot of talking, her explaining things to us. concepts like 80/20 weight distribution, chomping, and being long. then we’d line up and take turns practicing what she just explained. this is where i started to get really frustrated. i think what most pissed me off was doing this one where we’d skate up next to our partner, turn around and quickly do kind of a reverse long block to block them out, while skating backwards. i only know how to turn around the one way, and it was not the right way for this particular drill, so that threw my timing off and i couldnt get it right. i’d go through and shenita would give me a suggestion and then my next time she’d say something else to try and make me get it… and i was so frustrated i just growled at her. i growled at shenita stretcher! how mortifying. she was just like “i knowww, its hard…” and she probably didnt take it personally but i felt like an ass.
we did one drill partner blocking, and i didnt catch how she explained it, so i was lost through out it. i didnt know which line said what, and i was too scared to ask. i felt such anxiety and overwhelmed, and i think it hit me that i had a $111 citation to pay… i just felt tears coming to my eyes. i wanted to leave and go home. i thought about going to the bathroom for a good cry. i didnt though, i just stayed on the floor, miserable. i couldnt wait for it to be over.
finally it was, and we didnt have time to scrimmage. i would have liked the experience a lot more if it was just one of our girls explaining all the stuff and it was just our team. i would have felt a lot more comfortable i think. so i am really glad i never paid and travelled to go to a bootcamp. i think i’m just always gonna stay behind and wait for the girls who did go to bring back what they learned and teach it to us. at least now i know how i feel about bootcamps!