Practice Report - May 30

Last nights practice was a little weird... not in a bad way, but more in an unexpected way.  We had some people show up to practice that I would not have expected to see.  Gryphon, Xavier, and Alys all showed up.  Alys was doing drills last night with people to work off her rust from life.  Gryphon hung out and Xavier just popped by.  Others in attendance were Malcolm, Mabel, Jane, Firebow, Scrooby, and Diego.

I showed up early because Antonio was not going to be there.  Edmund had Gabriel for the night, so he swung by to open up the site, but Malcolm, Jane, and I were already there.  Mabel showed up and we started by doing some stretching outside on the grass, which I led.  We then moved back inside to fence.

Malcolm and I continued with rapier and dagger drills and then did a couple of passes.  I did notice while drilling that my hand was cramping, but it went away as the night progressed.  Next up was some passes with Jane.  She took a buckler, and I went single.  The last time I faced her prior to her showing up to practice a few weeks ago was probably 6 years ago.  They were some fun passes last night, but I felt like the distance we were fighting at was to my advantage, as she seemed to be hovering in that middle ground where I could hit her at extension but she could not hit me.  I was very surprised by her hand speed.

After some rest I fought Firebow.  We got locked up at one point and I took the end of his quillion right into the tip of my thumb.  Dumb mistake on the close as I don't want to be that close to any opponent as bad things can happen.  I much prefer to fight at distance.  After that, I put the dagger down for a bit, told him to keep his.  On our last pass, I picked my dagger back up.  The interesting thing was he did not notice that I have been fencing with a much shorter blade.  He was using his 40, I was giving up distance to him.  We talked for a bit afterwards about the passes and more.

My last fight of the night was Scrooby.  Fast, energetic, but he was either giving me the flat of his blade and had his dagger in very close.  

Overall, I'm feeling like I'm getting back to near where I was a few years ago before the shoulder injury.