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I made a post the other day on facebook that read It's a good thing roller derby got me to accept that I'm an athlete. Biked around the lake again this morning. This is a huge change of who I am and it's one that I'm extremely proud of.
Growing up, I hated physical activity. Sweating was gross and shouldn't happen. I had the chance to ski practically wherever I wanted for little to no cost (it helps having a Grandpa heavily involved in the ski industry) but had no interest in it. It was cold and you went up high on the ski lift and it required using your body. My body and I haven't always been on the best terms. There are still times where I'm comically awkward. It was far worse when I was younger. My "sport" was marching band and even that was grudgingly despite the fact that I played flute/piccolo and eventually became the drum major. Being drum major was pretty cool though and it did require the least amount of physical work. Don't get me wrong, waving your hands around and knowing all of the music is hard work but at least I got to stand still.
I went to college where we had no marching band and my physical activity dwindled even more. I remember once asking my advisor why he was going to go work out after working in the scene shop. Surely that was enough physical activity. I believe his response was along the lines of "you'll understand when you're older." By my last year of college, I had hooked up with this guy who did drum corps so I decided to do drum corps. I still wasn't an athlete though. I was a musician who was performing a very physically intense show but not an athlete despite all the running and push-ups and other core work.
Then came derby.
For whatever naive reason, derby wasn't going to make me an athlete. I didn't understand how much the sport can and does transform a person. Suddenly I was interested in how and what my body could do. Of course, this came after the Angry period of Derby Break-up but my faith in derby, and women, was restored by being in Debs.
As I spent more time skating, I started to care more about my body. I wanted to eat better and I wanted to be more active. The relationship I was in at the time wasn't helpful for either of these and with the introduction of my now-husband, I not only became more active but also started eating a lot better.
That fall, I signed up for my second session with Debs. We did some initial testing to figure out where people needed to be placed. After our testing, I got an email from the head trainer, Hanna, titled "Holy cow!". She was entering data from our testing and noticed that I had gotten 23 laps. She went on to say, after a few exchanges "Not an athlete my ass ;)".
I still have this email. Why? Well, Google does let me keep all of my messages but more importantly, it was part of the turning point on how I view myself. That year, we had athlete contracts so that we all started to think of ourselves as athletes. I think there is a common misconception that athletes are people who compete. I was under this belief. My personal opinion is that the gym culture in the states has a lot to do with this where people go and work-out but don't think of themselves as using their bodies as an athlete does. They are fulfill some mental checklist to stay healthy. I'm not saying this is true for all of them but I'm pretty sure if you stopped by a local gym and asked people if they thought they were an athlete, they wouldn't. So for me, I thought I was only an athlete if I was competing in some way. But this turns out to not be true. Yes, derby is a sprot that involves competition, but more than that, it involves being an athlete. It became so much easier to do things, and to believe in myself, when I accepted that as a truth. The video below came out last summer, around the time of the 2012 Summer Olympics. It still speaks to me.
