Friday, September 25, 2015

Practice Reports- Rose's Tourney

Its been almost a year since my last entry in this blog.  I'm not sure why I stopped writing. But reading +Whitney Sternberg's posts has made me think it might be a good to start this back up.

So with no Pennsic, and a lighter event schedule this year, I've tried to be consistent with going to the local practice.  We unfortunately lost our Thursday night site over the winter.  Thankfully, Orlando had developed an alternate site on Tuesday nights in Glen Gardener, NJ, so that has been the primary practice I am going to.  The usual people there are Orlando, Malcolm, Yehuda, Mike, and some new blood.

The first week of September, I fenced at practice.  Yehuda was hitting me left and right.  No matter what I was doing, something was off.  This had bugged me as I was trying to break down what was happening and coming up with no solutions.  Then it was two weeks without practice, as we were at Disney World.  We got back late on Wednesday, and I was not feeling great so I was not  sure if I would be attending the Roses Tourney.  I felt better on Friday so we made the trip.  It has been a while since I did such a long day trip and fenced at an event.

I had the honor and pleasure to fence for Duchess Aikaterine.   I was on a team with Caine, Yehuda, Theron, and Agapios.  I started the day out fencing well, but as the hours wore on, and more time passed, I was losing steam.  In a late bout against Sorcha, I tweaked my knee.  I tried to do a body void, but my upper body didn't move.  My lower leg shifted a bit.  I walked it off and was able to continue.  I only had a few bouts left in the day.  I had a great bout against +Whitney Sternberg, and I look forward to crossing blades with her sometime soon.  I also had great bouts with Jacob, Firebow, and Jean Xavier to name a few.  Overall, I was not satisfied with  my performance but was happy to spend time among my friends.  I do realize that winning isn't everything, but I prefer to fence to the best of my ability.  When I look back on the day, and I looked at my losses, I had no clue what I was doing wrong.

So Tuesday, I was not in the mood to go to practice, but I needed to get out of the house.  So to practice I went.  I faced Jonathon, my squire brother who took up fencing about a year ago.  I was seeing the openings, but something was off.  There were way too many double kills and just bad measure of my end.  In waiting for Orlando, I picked a fight with Bethany, who is a newer fencer.  Against her, I was still coming up short, and this was after changing my blade out from my 37 to the  43" blade.  I realized while fighting  against her that I was not moving my back foot.  Everything I was doing was like a short lunge, not an advance or passing step.  This was the same problem I had prior to the vacation, without realizing it.  So after fencing her, I went back to do a couple of passes with Jonathan just to test out the hypothesis.  Things were working better for me.  My next set of bouts was against Orlando, and I felt like I was myself again.  Things were flowing in my fencing as they should.  My last set of bouts was against Firebow, and they were a fun set of passes.

This weekend is River Wars, where I am looking forward to fencing some more and challenging myself.  Not sure if I am going to keep the 43 on my sword or drop back to my normal blade.  Most likely I'll be switching it up to see what is more comfortable with K&Q right around the corner.

More to come...

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