Megan Slater

In the year it took me to learn how to skate, eventually join a league and be drafted to a team I read all the books I could find about derby. I scoured DerbyLife.com for tidbits of what league membership would be like. I spent countless hours talking to skaters about what to expect and how to be ready but even with all that time and effort there was one thing I wish I had been told and it had nothing to do with skating.

There will be email. Lots of email.

The beginnings of any great relationship are intense. With the newness comes a certain thrill of discovery. With derby it’s the smell of your first pair of new skates, all fresh grease and stiff leather. It’s the sound of unsteady feet rolling along old wooden floors. It’s the sighs and gasps of amazement the first time you see sideways skating or an apex jump or a live Team USA player who must certainly be sent from some roller queen Valhalla to rule the track in awesome greatness.

When skater Megan Slater isn't busy skating or chronicling her fresh meat journey here on DerbyLife, she gets crafty! Witness: her lovely stitching of derby designs by Sublime Stitching! What crafts do you get up to in your almost non-existent "spare time" (or while injured)? Show us your skills in the comments!

The time had come. I was sitting in a nervous huddle at the gaudy yellow tables and benches atop the unwashed bright blue starry carpet in the corner of the Everett Skate Deck with 10 women that I’ve come to know and respect over the past several months of Jet City’s new skater training program. We were waiting to be told who had made teams and who would remain in training. You could have cut the tension with a knife. Finally, one of the league skaters solemnly walked over and affixed a large piece of paper to the wall indicating skaters and the teams that had chosen them.

There’s something about derby that skews my perception of reality in favor of the extreme. Every time I walk into the rink I feel like I’m waging an epic battle in which we mere humans don our armor and morph into gladiators - larger than life and hungry for war. Yet the fall that screwed up my PCL was not epic. There were no screaming crowds or brawling foes. I couldn’t even really tell you what happened. I fell, and when I stood up something wasn’t right. I removed my skates and walked off the floor without fanfare.

Almost from the very first time you strap on your skates and gear and start to train for derby, people will tell you that you ought to be cross training. But with that directive comes a myriad of questions. Which kinds of exercises should I really being doing for cross training? How often? Why should I even bother? What should I be doing with my team? To help answer those questions and more I sat down with a couple of skaters whose faces you may recognize from DVD’s in your own cross training routine:

“This is the hardest part of my job...”

I was sitting at a table across from my coach, one on one. I wasn’t sure that I could describe the expression on his face. Resignation? Encouragement? Disappointment? I knew what was coming. Today was the day he was letting the women on our training team know who was eligible to be picked up by a house team and who needed more time. If he’d started the conversation like that, it could really only end one way.

There comes a point in every derby girl's career where she begins to play derby with and against the very women who taught her how to play derby. It’s a terrifying moment. It seems like such a short time ago that we were being taught to duck walk (back when duck walks were hard) and now the woman who taught you how to duck walk is salivating at the opportunity to run your ass all over the track.

4:09. I was pretty proud of that. 25 laps in 4:09. That was my time after five months of skating and it allowed me to believe that speed wasn’t necessarily a skill on which I needed to spend a great deal of time. After all, if the goal was to be able to skate 25 in 5:00, I was smoking it. I believed that right up until the day at practice we were working on skating 10 second laps in a pack.

It’s that time of year again. You know the one I mean. You’re innocently watching TV when an an annoyingly cheerful skinny person tells you that it’s only six months ‘till bikini season! Suddenly there are photos of a chubby version of this individual and promises that this pill or that diet plan are all you need to make your dreams of a banging’ body come true.