Had my first Fresh Meating (pardon the pun) and it wasn’t as scary as I thought it was. Sure, I freaked out, told my boyfriend I couldn’t pick him up from work (because a commitment 2 hours before the meeting would have been cutting it too close), and wound up at the practice facility about 45 minutes early (which seems excessive).
I’d worried we were going to have a practice or off skates workout or something but that didn’t end up being the case. Instead we met, were told the basics, and then got to watch a scrimmage.
As part of joining Fresh Meat I had to sign a confidentiality agreement. Part of that has to do with me not revealing any sort of trade or training secrets that ARG has. I think that means I need to edit what I post on this blog so as not to break the agreement. So from now on I probably won’t post all the specifics for assessments on here so as not to give away all of the structure. I don’t think I’ll change any previous posts because they were done prior to joining Fresh Meat.
But in the future I’ll probably keep posts more to specific skills that I’m working on, off skates exercises I’m doing, vague progress reports and scores as far as freshmeat assessments go, and continued equipment reviews/research and technique research. Hope that’s okay with whomever reads these.
What I can tell you about my Fresh Meat future:
-The practice schedule isn’t as scary as people make it sounds, though I’m sure it will still be all-consuming. There are 4 scheduled practices a week and we are asked to show up to a minimum of 50%. The more the better. There are other auxiliary practices we can go to that can count towards our attendance, and it is strongly encouraged that we skate as much on our own time as we can. In addition to practices it is also recommended that we participate in as many other league activities as we are able in order to help get to know the other skaters and make a good impression.
-For each assessment I think we will get 3 chances to pass it. Scarily enough, the first assessment will be in less than a month (Oct 10 I believe is the first one). That means I have a lot of work to do in a short amount of time…
-It looks like there are 21 girls in this fresh meat class. That’s quite a bit of competition, considering at least 7 of them have skated on teams or in Fresh Meat before. Those girls definitely have the upper hand and if I want to continue to be a viable candidate for the team I need to put in a lot of work to show rapid improvement, hard work, and dedication.
So practice starts tomorrow. For now I’m unemployed so I have a bit of free time to dedicate to the sport. I plan on using my free time to do strengthening exercises, do cross training, and work on skills on my own time. Here’s hoping!
Eight Wheeled Adventure 