Tuesday, August 14, 2012

RollerCon '12, Las Vegas: Day Life

Last year's RollerCon was an Epic Fail for me. Remember...
This year was faaar better and I could enjoy all the facets of the event. At least the two main ones: Day life (i.e. derbying) and Night life (i.e. partying).

 This year was particularly huge. 5 to 6 thousand derbypeople in the same hotel, the Riviera down the Strip in Las Vegas. 5 days of non-stop events, on skates, off skates, on track, in pool, on dancefloor...
Off-skate workouts, conferences, on-skate classes, scrimmages and bouts constituted the day-time events and were organized in parallel in several rooms.

The off-skate part was made of workout classes and conferences on various subjects. Except for the pool workout for which the pool of the hotel was reserved (obviously), the workout classes took place at the very last floor of the Monaco Tower with a large bay window onto the city and the desert in the background. Stretching classes at 7PM with the sunset over the city were great.


The on-skate part was treated to 7 tracks including a big one for the bouts which were scheduled non-stop all day long. The other 6 ones were mainly reserved for the classes and scrimmages. Lots of shops and brands had their stands, either in the big bouting room or in other dedicated rooms.

Map of the event. Sorry for the unwanted advertizing.
The classes and scrimmages were classified according to the skills level needed (0 to 4), which was a good thing to get a clue whether it was going to be useful, useless or too hard for you. Some classes were scheduled several times, some others were unique.

Anybody with a basic skater pass could attend off-skate classes and scrimmages. On the other hand, attending on-skate classes was a bit more tricky:

In order to attend on-skate classes, you had to get an MVP pass.
In order to get an MVP pass, you had to purchase it weeks in advance.

In order to purchase it weeks in advance, you had to be aware that you were going... Yet, I had the green light to get my plane tickets only 3 weeks before the event, i.e. far after the last MVP pass was sold. I had convinced Karla Karschër to make the trip and we were about to confirm our flights when we found out that the passes were no longer available on the website. Hopefully, we managed to get extra MVP vendor passes thanks to CrazySkates and the booking went well.

Now, let's assume that you are the proud owner of an MVP pass -- the legitimity of which you have to double-prove with your card (with your derby and real names on it) and your sticker on the left side of your helmet. Oh, let's also mention that volunteers regularly check that your identity matches the one written on your MPV card.
Alright, let's come back to our classes.
In order to attend an on-skate class, you have to get a ticket.
In order to get a ticket, you have to be part of the 60 first people to ask for it.
In order to ask for it, you have to stand in line.
In order to stand in line, you have to be ready 2 hours before the beginning of the class.
In the end, you come back on time, 2 hours later, and walk through the door of the room, praying that the class is going to be worth the inconvenience*.

YES, I said "walk". Because NO, "you are not allowed to wear skates unless you have all your gear on". But anyway, you should not skate outside of the track for "safety reasons"...
We've got the French federation insurance, our personal insurance and the single-event American USARS insurance on top of it... What more should we need to relax a bit?

Did I mention that the floor was carpeted in the whole hotel?
How can you possibly hurt yourself with a carpeted floor and your full gear on?


Surrounded with carpet...


"At first, I had decided that I was going to the RollerCon
for a special purpose: SKATING...
 
I needed both to assess my ability to come back for the next season and to take coaching notes to bring back to Paris. And obviously to get inspired by some good American derby!

As soon as the first class, attractively entitled "antigravity", I subjected my knee to a test: Jumping the Apex. In every possible way: single, double, 180, short and long jumps... I must be lacking development in my jumps because the takeoff leg is still deficient, but as I land on the good one it works pretty well for a start. I double-checked the solidity of the knee with a couple of workout classes. Quite reactive. Encouraging.
I pushed the experiment further in attending classes with player interactions. I am now sure that I can (efficiently) build and (savagely) destroy walls, as well as do effective positional blocking. Yeah!
Yet, I avoided going to open scrimmages as I'm still not sure about what a bad fall on the knee would cause. I can handle myself to avoid bad falls, but interacting with other players implies much more parameters to be aware of. Karla's wrist knows what I'm talking about... It was close!

"...But then, I started to take an interest into the evening schedule..."
 (to be continued...)


*The lines were more due to the event being victim of its success than to an organization problem!

2 comments:

  1. watch the jumps or better the landings or even better, others landing on you.
    Cool you made it to Rollercon

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    Replies
    1. Thank you for the advice :) I'm still building the lazy thigh up. I'm almost there! I'm working on explosivity and reactivity (special drills) and endurance (jogging and city-skate). I should double-check my improvements with one-leg long jumps, though.

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