Booty Boot Camp.

After much hyperventilating and insane running around to complete a gazillion last minute things; it was finally time to leave for the boot camp. Rocket the WonderCivic was loaded full of fellow derby girls and crammed full of gear, suitcases, snacks and music and we were off. And even pretty much on time.

There were the usual pitstops in podunk towns for bathroom breaks; and one memorable stop at a small town bar (the only place open at 11:30pm which had a bathroom) where we were treated to an astounding -- and I'll let you interpret that as you will -- rendition of Johnny Cash's "Fulsom Prison Blues" which had us giggling well past the next town on the map. The miles added up and we talked (loudly) and laughed (madly) and sang (badly) the whole way to The 'Peg. We arrived in stellar fashion at about 1am and after first attempting to check in at the wrong hotel (there was Two along the same long stretch of road in the city, we stopped at the first one...) we finally laid our heads down.
Well, we could have, but we had to paint our names and numbers on our scrimmage shirts. Sleep could come later.

2am and the last shirt was hanging to dry, leaving us a precious 5 hours of shut-eye before it was up and off to the Military Rec Center where the bootcamp was to be held.
There are some girls I don't look forward to "running into" on the track. Girl in Blue is one of them. What she lacks in skill is more than made up for in sheer size. Man in Black was one of the conditioning coaches.
This is a pic of me with my roomies from our league. L-R: Curly Mae, Crash Override, Knotty Knox and ME!
I am usually pretty vain about pics that I post... but frankly had to get over it, cause there's not a single one from the weekend of me that passes muster. Here I am five hours into the day, not a shred of makeup on and had passed the point of Sweaty and Vile a good two hours earlier. Hope you all still love me. :)

I've done some tough workouts in my life; I've weathered hour after hour of Krav training, pushed through an afternoon of testing for my ranking... and I have to say that this bootcamp kicked my butt something fierce. Kicked us all. We started out with an hour of plyometric drills. Frog jumps, Power skips, one-leg squats, jump squats, star jumps... basically 60 minutes of every variation of pain that could be visited upon one's lower body. Enough that we all had the dreaded "Rubber Leg Syndrome" for the rest of the day. Which is usually bad enough... but we still had six hours of skating and derby drills to get through. And, as you can imagine... skating on rubber legs? Not real fun. At all. But, we all learned a ton. Coach P. is a real, live derby legend, he literally "wrote the rules". One of the founding members of WFTDA and a truly great guy to boot. He loves and lives this sport and it showed. He had a great way of explaining skills, breaking stuff down and just generally getting across to us what we needed to do, and how to it better. And, he made us wish we were better. Cause we are frankly rank beginners (would it sound bad if I said, "Especially the other League"???) and a lot of his expertise was wasted on us at the moment.

Eventually, we hit our last hour of training and lugged our gear back to the hotel where hot showers and pizza got us through to the after party.

I'm learning more about derby culture and the After Party is one of those things that is legendary to the point of being tradition in Derby. Some things you may expect to see at a derby after party? Live music, strange contests, 50/50 tickets bought by the "Butt, Boob or Leg" length, pillow fights, giant pyramids of empty beer cans... the list goes on.

This particular after party was held at a little hole in the wall pub, not lacking charm entirely, but a little bit rough around the edges. Maybe I was just tired. OK, I was super tired and super hurtin. In fact, this is me... almost falling asleep despite the din of noise and crush of people.
Problem was, I was on the pillowfight roster. I needed help. One RockStar energy drink to the rescue, and things were looking better.
Which was really good, cause the pillow fights were nasty. Nasty, nasty fun.

I was second on the board, slotted to fight a 'Peg girl. I was warned she would be feisty, but didn't know what to expect. We're just standing there trading blows, right? That's what the first round fighters did. I've never seen a pillow fight before. And here is where I will let the pictures do the talking. (I'm in the grey tank.)



Yeah, you saw that right. That sh&# got taken DOWN to the FLOOR, people! I reversed the takedown and we ended up totally up in each other's binness which apparently makes the crowd a little loud and rowdy. Unfortunately I lost the fight when I lost grip on my pillow during the scuffle. (Another rule I wasn't aware of, else I would've been holding tight to that thing, I tell you. I didn't flash my back fat to the whole bar of derby fans to walk away without winning. True that.) I will humbly say that I dominated that ground game, but I will give Little Miss 'Peg props cause she was mad feisty and wily. But, I will not be so naive next bout. Game on!

Next up were The Magnificent Sevens. Don't ask me why they were called that, there were only five of them. I don't really know how to classify their style... maybe Rockabilly Bluegrass might come close. They were surprisingly good and I really enjoyed their first set.

But the tiredness was hitting us all pretty hard. It was 2am and we pretty much all just looked around the table at the weary eyes and said, We're outta here.

I don't know what all other derby goodness we missed, but I'm sure I'll see it again somewhere else, some other time.
(Coach Pauly with a few of my derby girls; Gates of Hell, Bunny Slugga and D Ablo.)

The next morning we overslept and rushed to make check-out before heading to a much looked-forward to destination. An old school roller rink, complete with disco ball and DJ. We skated. We fell. OK, well, I fell. I was tired, OK? It was a humbling experience all around. We danced to "YMCA", played Pick A Wall (I was one measly round from winning the coveted concession token) and generally tried to work out some of the stiffest, sorest, tiredest muscles before we crammed all back in the vehicle for another 5+ hours to get back home.

And with that, my first Roller Derby Boot Camp came to an end and I am now left trying to recover some crazy sore legs and backside; nothing left but to look forward to the next one.

The girls in our league found out that our names won't clear the roster for a few months, so in the meantime, we've just decided to go ahead and NameUp. Hopefully everything works out and I won't have to change anything.

So, for now? Kitty Killswitch is In Da House!