Training Log Archive: Anna

Forgot to start my Strava, and was stopping to catch pokemon, so time and distance are an estimate. Had been walking my Magikarp for candies to power up my 98th percentile Gyrados, but then I caught a ton of Magikarps in Shaw Park and am completely set till I max it out!!! :D

Also Pokemon made an update so different types of pokemon show up depending on the weather, and IT WAS SNOWING!!!!!! I'm about to get a badge for all the ice pokemon I'm catching, and my UCSD friends are so super jealous! (Except one of them who's in Chicago right now.) Muahahaha.

Was originally not supposed to be warm today, but woke up and it was above 40, so headed back to the tennis courts to skate! Legs were tight when I woke up, but walking to the park in all my clothes and then this amount of running drills was a very good warmup. (Wore my favorite wool base layer with thumbholes from Oiselle!)

Also, I went to bed around 7 or 8 and then woke up around 7 or 8, and my app says I got 11 hours of sleep :D My door was still closed when I woke up, and my parents said the cats were locked in their room all night :o Very nice for me!!!

- On-skate warmup of a few laps of sticky feet
- Almost forgot padded shorts so hurried over and put them on!
- Some weaving with the cones farther apart, focused on striding through them and going faster
- Some weaving focusing on keeping my feet all the way together and weaving with both
- Some transitions trying to get myself to trust my left foot as much as my right foot
- Some mohawks/heel kicks trying to do the same thing--improving!!!

Yayyyyy cleaned my bearings today!!! Exciting thing #1 is that I could see my package with my cleaning supplies coming on Amazon's website, and it told me how many deliveries the driver had to make before mine, and it showed the delivery truck on the map as a sleigh!!!!

Exciting thing #2 is that I can see a noticeable difference in how long my wheels roll!!! Before there were 1 or 2 that would stop spinning immediately after I spun them, which didn't seem like the best thing in the world. Possible that I'll have way less balance with the more roll-y skates now, but excited to try them out anyway!

- Hard abs w/ my skates (6.5 lbs) for russian twists
- A few core/back things
- A few pushups

- Weaving through cones again, was notably easier today. Cones were ~4-5 feet apart. Could go much faster if I didn't keep both feet down, and I think getting faster could be a whole practice by itself :)
- Some time going up and down on toe stops
- Some time walking on toe stops (but realized one was loose and had to go tighten!)
- Working on transitions after a few strides from a stop--still need to get more comfortable going backwards on my left leg before I'll feel comfortable doing this at a brisk pace around a track!
- Practicing going on one leg for about the length of a straightaway and then making an outside/inside track-sized turn.

Sleep interrupted last night by a combination of west coast sleep schedule and cats breaking into my room and leaving the door open when they left -_-

Off-skate warmup! Made sure to do lateral motion stuff. Also including backwards running.

A bit of sticky feet to warm up, then set up some cones 4-5 feet apart in a line and practiced weaving between. Tricky tricky! I think my trucks are still pretty tight (makes skates less responsive), but *are* pretty even, and was able to do the right-edge turns from the very beginning. So the rest of the time, focused on making my left leg catch up. Things I focused on:

- Keeping both inside and outside knees bent
- Sometimes did a right/left plow to slow down into the turn
- Sometimes kept my skates more parallel and tried to propel myself through the turn (maybe I was pushing off a bit out of the last turn? but still both skates on the ground). This one felt like downhill skiing! :D
- Sometimes was controlling my speed using zig-zaggy sticky feet. Should try this sometimes without cones.
- Keeping my arms in good position

NO toe-stop work, but arches continuing to feel less tight each day (barely noticeable today, esp. later in day).

Note to self that this is one of the skating things where I'm least likely to fall!!!

- "Hard abs" set from my Gym Hero app. Made when I was applying for grad school and wanted the most bang for my buck. Things like v-ups, modified v-ups, russian twists, reverse crunches. ~5 min.
- Assortment of plank-y stuff and back-raise-y stuff. New thing I found on a YouTube video was "plank-jacks", which are where you do a plank and do your legs in a jumping-jack motion.

Working on heel kicks/mohawks off skates. Basically going back and forth keeping my feet as close as parallel to possible. Held the position for different amounts of time, ~1-5 seconds. Felt it in my upper legs/glutes mostly, which I think means I'm turning my legs from the hips like I'm supposed to. Realized I'm not all that stable at this off skates yet, so seems beneficial to do :)

Also next time could add some things they used to have us do in barre class where there are various combinations of squats at different heights, pulses at different squat heights, etc.

Arches were still a bit tight from the toe stop work the other day (although better than yesterday), so opted to not really do much. This 5 minutes was me doing mohawks back and forth in my parents' kitchen, this time without needing to hold on to anything! But now that I know the arch tightness is a thing that happens when I practice toe stops, seems like the kind of thing where I want to consistently build up those muscles a tiny bit at a time. In the meantime, watched a lot of YouTube videos about toe stop work and feeling like being a jammer would be exciting! :D

All the derby how-to's on YouTube had me thinking about how roller derby/orienteering are similar/different in terms of recruiting new people. With roller derby, my league has a "Fresh Meat" night (that's what you're called before you've passed minimum skills), and they had gear for us to borrow at first and also told us a shop to go to to get a starter kit of derby gear. The owner of the skate shop is a super-knowledgeable (former?) derby player who tells us about all the gear, how it's supposed to fit, and what are the likely first upgrades we'll make. (The largest league in SD actually has entire roller derby bootcamps for new skaters, but they're like twice the cost and a longer bus ride from campus.) Annnnnnd there's all these roller derby how-to's on YouTube! I watched an entire championships bout with my parents, "Roller Derby 101"s about rules, how to adjust my skates/replace toe stops (upgraded my toe stops today!), and tons of videos of drills and training that feature some of the same skaters you'll see if you watch championships bouts. I wonder how much of this exists for orienteering but haven't had the chance to check! I think I remember some clubs having free compass/epunch borrowing for local meets, which seems like a plus :) It's been useful to me to have a structured environment at roller derby where they're teaching us stuff and making sure we know the rules, but not sure how useful/easy that sort of thing + a skills assessment would be for orienteering. In roller derby I think it's super necessary so we don't injure ourselves, and probably also for insurance purposes, and maybe the beginner-friendliness is a happy side-effect :)