Normal service has resumed.

Last Saturday night was tops. I headed up to Newy to celebrate Cass' birthday with some of her Newy team mates. It was great to hang out with some awesome derby folk away from derby. There was lots of laughs and drinks. Tantrum really is something special. She just exudes confidence, the more I hang around the likes of Tantrum the more I start to come out my shell. I love the fact that derby has helped me out in more than just skating skills.

On Monday I entered the physio's office hoping that I'd finally get my clearance to go back to full training. My knee was responding well with the increased training and exercise and my physio was pretty confident that I was reaching the stage where I could go back to full training, her only issue was the impact on my knee when I'd fall on it during training. She worked on my knee and was happy with how it responded so she said she was going to write a full clearance letter for me!! You'd have thought I would have jumped off the physio table in happiness but it was mostly relief that I was feeling at this stage because it meant I could finally move onto the next stage.

I'm in limbo right now about which level I'll be at when I go back to training. Our league has a policy that if you're off skates for more than 3 months you drop down a level. I got back on skates before 3 months BUT it's been over 3 months since I did full derby training. I'm waiting to hear back from the relevant parties on what my fate is. If I do drop back down to Corporal level 2, it'll mean I passed Sergeant level but never got to train at that level because I got injured the same night I passed the assessment. It would be typical of my derby journey to date so at this stage I wouldn't be surprised if that happens.

Throughout all this it has made me realise that I don't fear coming across anyone on the derby track anymore because I don't think anything could be tougher than all the crap I've had to go through just to get to bouting level. If I was going to have a problem with anyone or any team it would have been Jilla and Newy. Having had the chance to do some blocking with Jilla earlier this year I got to have my 'eek I'm fangirling about blocking with Jilla' moment that it's now out of my system. Now it's about not giving her the satisfaction of putting me on my arse and getting added to her trophy cabinet :) Same goes for scrimmaging with NRDL earlier this year, having experienced that it has made me prepared on what to expect so that I don't get all the caught up in the moment for when we finally do bout them.

There's some amazing scrimmage/bouting opportunities coming up for our league. If I get to remain at Sergeant level I'll be putting my hand up for that because it'll be an amazing learning experience coming up against other league's. Regardless of which level I end up at on Friday night one thing I am looking forward to now that I've got my full clearance is going back to the Newy social skates. I've always treated those as extra training sessions and they helped improve me a lot. There's also the CKO social skates that I want to try and get to because I would be able to skate and block with my friend Candy again which I'm really looking forward to.

It's onwards and upwards from here!