I'm back

To be short, a lot of things have happened in the last year; I injured myself (dodgy knees from childhood netball, being a tomboy and a klutz come back to haunt me), I broke up with my long term boyfriend (right about the time of my last post, too), and I withdrew from derby socialising a bit too, since everything seemed so damned hard for a while there. It certainly wasn't the best time for any of it, but shit happens. I wish I'd stayed more on top of things, but my survival mechanism has always involved withdrawing.

So I'm back. Back at training as of the new season, which started last Monday. Back in an online capacity. For the first time in a long while, things are back on the right track for me. I even accidentally managed to find a guy that ticked all of the relationship boxes, and get into a relationship with him (and he provides moral support on derby to boot). I plan on making myself more available to my league, committee and most importantly, my team - an amazing bunch of women and men all in all.

To be brutally honest, toting my gear to work last Monday, I couldn't help but think to myself: is this a mistake? All of my old fears came back to nibble at me throughout the day, until I turned to my cubicle mate five minutes before work finished (who happens to be another derby player, my amazing friend and track-rival Lady Roll d'Mort) and stared squeaking about finally getting my skates back on. It had hit me all of a sudden, I really was excited to be back.

Returning to training is always hard; not having done any exercise in the last few months took it's toll on me. But coming back to training, putting my skates on (forgetting my inserts and skating without them), and finally doing this again got me so excited for the coming year, the sweat and pain that it's sure to bring.

We've started with just under thirty freshies to train up - whittling them down from the 100-odd we had at the start of the last fresh meat was an unenviable task for the league members who ran the training sessions. A new team is on the cards for us. Another league has developed in our city, so the chances of inter-league bouts have escalated. I can't wait to see what else 2010 will bring to Adelaide Roller Derby, but chances are, it's going to be magnificent.