2014: A Look Back

Somehow, I've managed to not write anything since March. This thankfully doesn't mean I haven't been active since then.

Parkour sort of hit a wall this year. Things in my personal life made doing it difficult. I kept meaning to go to one event or another and things (mostly excuses) kept cropping up. I did eventually make it back to the gym, for a women's parkour meet-up. I was pretty sure the only thing I would remember would be the vaults as I actually use those fairly often. They are really useful at work. Turns out I remembered a lot more than I thought I would. I didn't look like an awkward moose while trying to do a shoulder roll. There was actual upward momentum when I did a wall run. And I nearly made it onto the top of the 6' wall. And I still hate kong vaults.

Derby has been interesting. Debs has changed, evolved, as is often necessary. I surprised myself by testing well enough to stay in the mid-level group. I made nearly half of the practices (stupid illness made me short by one but the coaches understood). The spring should be even better. It's amazing how much I remembered! I'm excited to see what the spring will bring. Most likely, more dry lands as all the events in St. Paul in the spring make practice spaces hard but I'm okay with that.

Emerging from the silence

It's been a while since I've written about my fitness and skating. Work has sped up and slowed down and sped up again. This makes it hard to do anything consistently. I've managed to go skating a few times and definitely have missed the feel of wheels under my feet. However, I'm not entirely sure I miss derby.

The game has certainly evolved since the last time I went to a bout (new rules have been released at least once if not twice since the last time I went to a bout). I sometimes wonder if people miss me and I'm sure that some do but I completely get the "out of sight, out of mind" reality of it. When you're pushing your body through those practices, you don't have time to think about who isn't there. You're too busy pushing yourself and supporting the people who are there. When I was still active, there were other women that I would reach out to on facebook when I realized that I truly hadn't seen them for a while (this was hard for me to judge as I was often not around a lot). I know a few of them were very touched that I had messaged them because it seemed that no one else had done so.

I miss the skating. I miss the hard work. I miss the people. I don't know if I miss the game though. I can certainly get my butt kicked doing other things and I can skate and enjoy that. It's hard to be completely into something when you can't be around. At the end of last year, I looked at my work schedule and realized that I'd be available for even fewer practice sessions than I had in the fall. As much as I wanted to sign up and be able to do it, it made even less sense. I did eventually get on skates again, but it was honestly after the new year. I haven't made a bout yet. There have been a few times that I could have gone, if I didn't mind going after a long day at work (it's exhausting to listen to talks on international politics and peace keeping) or skipping out on something else, like sleep. There's one more bout in the MNRG season left and as much as I want to go and cheer on my former Debs team mates, I know it's probably not going to happen. That will make two seasons where I've not managed to make a bout and that makes me sad. It's certainly not out of laziness. It's mostly about my job. I guess that's a big down side to work in theatre.

I've not been too active in parkour lately either. Frankly, it's been a rotten start to the new year. I've tried squeezing in parkour classes and never seem to have enough time. I can plot things out but it seems I'm not able to predict how intense work or life is going to be, which ends up keeping me from class. Add into it the worst winter I've ever experienced in Minnesota and there were days that I just didn't leave the house. It was safer that way. The next time I do make it to Fight or Flight Academy, I'm investing in a punch card. The last several months that I've paid for a number of classes for the month (4 classes), I usually end up only making 2 or 3 classes. Better to go with a punch card that I can use whenever and that I'll actually get the full value out of it.

Additionally, I've found a yoga center I like. They do hot yoga and barre classes. My favorite yoga classes are at 9 pm and then I sleep really well. I've taken 3 barre classes and each one seems to be getting harder. Barre is a combination of yoga, pilates and ballet work. I've taken the class with a different instructor each time. The first two times were the 60 minute classes. Today I took the 75 minute class. It was the hardest so far. It was harder than most derby practices. I think this is mostly due to the fact that when we do some drills in derby, we were usually in some sort of line, so you'd get a bit of a break. Not so with barre. You just keep going, with a beat. It never seems to end. While I learned where my core was doing roller derby, I seem to be on a path to beat it into submission with barre. There is a part of me, when we're doing work with the bar, that feels like the dream of being a ballerina is coming true. I've yet to break it to myself that I'm not going to be dancing on stage, but maybe I can get the body of a dancer and then learn how to dance on my skates. That's still one of my goals. I've been looking into dancing lessons at the Roller Garden. They have them on Monday nights. Now to just get through the next hurdle of work so that I can make those lessons.