Monday, November 29, 2010

First FM Practice

Wow. I am now home, showered, and relaxing. I even ate a second dinner. But about 830pm I was DYING. No, not really. The worst would have been me throwing up or fainting, but I did neither. I hung onto what was left of my first dinner. The real danger for me was fainting.

What did we do during practice to cause this?

We warmed up, stretched, bunch of drills (such as crab walking, vine crab walking, stops), then we began endurance drills, both clockwise and counter clockwise. It was nuts.
We did four step sprints at every whistle, 30 second sprints, 60 second sprints, rainbows at the whistle, touch the floor at the whistle, pushers on the turns and coasting on the straightaways until the whistle, and many more! Plus every once in awhile, they had us stop and do 5 or 10 pushups. Man, I'm going to do pushups at home so I'll be able to keep up at practice!

THEN we did suicides!!!!!!!!

We split into two groups for that. Think you get to rest while the other group kills themselves? Nope, you do crunches or pushups until it's your group's turn!!!!
We skated and did drills for the solid two hours. It was great. The two coaches tonight were a great mix of toughness and fun. My favorite new thing that I learned was the left (or right) one legged plow stop.

Wow, but I think the worst part was staying low while skating and coasting. Towards the end, my thighs were burning so red hot that I almost got a second wind. One of the skaters was great at keeping the balance between encouraging and annoying to challenge me to stay low, which really motivated me.

I came home and was SO high on endorphins that my roommate was laughing at how happy I was. Okay, I'm also happy because I love skating, but yes, the endorphins are great. And I don't feel sore at all - yet. I ate lots of protein all day and especially during my second dinner, so hopefully I won't tomorrow either, but we shall see!!

P.S. The truly hard part of this first practice was not knowing how to pace myself because I didn't know what to expect. I mean, I knew we were going to do drills and endurance that focus on skating forward and stopping, but I didn't know how hard we were going to be pushed. Next practice should be better, just in terms of learning how to pace myself so I'm still challenged but not utterly decimated to the point where I'll faint.
I think the coaches did a great job of making sure they drained every last drop of our energy, and then some, in those two hours and I can't wait until Wednesday...

Sidenote: I wonder if any girls will drop out after this intense practice? Perhaps that was their aim tonight - to see if they could weed out the weaklings or the wavering, on the fence sorts. Honestly though, I didn't see any of those sorts at practice tonight. Okay, maybe I noticed two girls, but I talked to a bunch after practice and most of them seemed to feel worse than I did. So perhaps everyone is just really good at biting the bullet and keeping it all behind the mask while they skate. I know I don't though. My face is still pretty expressive, but perhaps that's because I'm not pushing myself enough!!

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