Fencing Freak-out

At fencing tonight, I was in a bout with one of the girls at the club and had the tip of my weapon get stuck between the outer rim and the mesh of her mask. Needless to say, we were both really freaked out and she is going to be getting a new mask really soon. No one was hurt, just freaked out. Below is a picture of the approximate location of where my point got stuck, but it was under the solid rubber black thing. Eep!!!

Darn!

I just logged in to Blogger and was hoping that the blog-bot had generated something clever for today. It seems that I am, yet again, on my own.

Today's the last day before classes start which means that I spent most of it reading papers that I meant to read last week and entering data that I collected in the last couple weeks into Excel. These activities fried my brain sufficiently that I thought the fencing this evening was a good idea. We had a group lesson that went something like this:

Coach: Parry four and make the person attacking you disengage.
I give it a shot. FAIL.
Coach: Sarah, all you have to do is parry four.
Me: Ok. I know.
I try again. FAIL.
Coach: Do it again. Slowly.

It went on like this, generally painful all around. I decided that an individual lesson wasn't in my best interest tonight. Decided to go swimming for a few minutes to clear my head. Pool closed at 8. I walked down at 8:01.

Sigh.

Now, it's time to find food and enter more data.

A good idea?

We'll see.

Miami

We got back from Miami on Friday. We had a great time, including a couple days of "vacation", something we've not done for over six years. After Jeremy fenced on Saturday in Div. I (he placed 38/65), we had Sunday to Tuesday to relax. We spent some time by the pool Sunday and had a the steak dinner mentioned before.

Monday, we went to the Edison-Ford Winter Estate in Ft. Myers. My parents drug me there when I was a teen and entirely too cool for doing tourist-type things....until I got there and was fascinated with the grounds, especially the trees. It was still really cool. We walked the grounds, checked out the houses, and poked around in the lab and museum. This is the only place that I've been really impressed with the gardens, mostly because there's such a variety of plants and with an eye towards research. Other gardens are pretty, but they just don't fascinate me like this one. This all, once again, confirms my geekdom.

This is the Mysore Fig. Not the biggest one on the property, but still a large tree. The roots stick up for stability (and other reasons, I'm sure), but some on the larger tree are four feet tall.

Banyan Tree, yes, just one tree in this picture. It grows support branches as they're needed. Very cool. This particular tree takes up almost an acre and is the largest specimen in North America. It's theoretically a cutting from the largest one in the world.

We had P.F. Chang's carryout (with some drama-they got my order wrong two times!) and a bottle of wine for dinner. The wine was Ch. Lilian Ladouys, a 2003 St. Estephe, which had a really subtle fruity flavor, and a nice, soft mouth-feel. I would say that it's a typical 2003 Bordeaux, ready to drink now, but will be very good in a few years, too. I really enjoyed it. We actually let it sit for a couple days and it was still very nice rather than adopting that jammy flavor that develops when you let many other wines sit. It wasn't a particularly distinct wine, but would be a really nice table wine, a safe choice for most occasions and something I would be happy to have in my cellar.

The Lilian Ladouys label. Yum!

The Copa America is going on right now. We watched a bit of pool play while waiting for our carryout. On Tuesday, we found a little pizza joint called Archie's showing pool play for the tournament. They were also the only place open on the 4th, so we ended up going back. The atmosphere was great, with people cheering and excited about the games. They also had a convincing pizza rustico. I was pleased. I had a cheese calzone the second night and was surprised that they included a Gorgonzola, which sounded better than it actually was.

Jeremy fenced in Div. IA on Wednesday. We were done early enough that I was able to get to the pool for some more sun and reading.

I fenced in Div. IA on Thursday, I wasn't in as long as I would have liked, but was fairly pleased with my day. A group of us went out to dinner Thursday night at a little Cuban place, which left a little to be desired in the area of service. The company more than made up for the shortcomings of the restaurant.

Oh. Right. One more thing. We took advantage of the concierge services of the hotel and ate dessert in the lounge almost every night. Our good host, Edgar even saved me some chocolate goodness one night after hours. The desserts were amazing. Here we have from foreground to background, a flan, a chocolate mousse and Ganache mini-cake, a little chocolate tart thingie, and carrot cake. We also had, at some point, cheesecake, tiramisu cheesecake, and blueberries. Wow.

It rained.

Written on Sunday...posted significantly later so I could add the pictures:

Jeremy and I are in Miami for Fencing Summer Nationals. He fenced in Division I on Saturday and did a bang-up job. After his tournament, we went out to dinner...errr...lunch...errr...whatever meal falls at 4:30 on Saturday afternoon. The important part is that we went to a place around here called Novecento. It was really good. Started with a Caprese salad that had some (obviously) homemade mozz, which I really appreciated. I had the eggplant ravioli and a glass of non-descript pinot grigio. Towards the end of the meal, it started thundering. We decided to take advantage of the short, mid-afternoon-Florida rain to have another round, but ended up sitting for another two hours waiting for it to stop pouring. Jeremy and I started taking random pictures with our phones (yes, see below) and taunting the waiters while they were trying to poke the tents with the ends of brooms. Physics seemed to escape them. It was a lot of fun. It's been a really long time since I've sat outside, under the protection of a large umbrella watching it rain unrelentlessly. People looked miserable. I was delighted. No place to go, nothing to do. Heaven.

I don't think you can actually see the rain very well, but it was coming off the canvas in a steady pour.

Funny pic with the strange self-portrait function of the camera.

Walking back to the hotel after the rain. It evidently rained hard enough that the city drainage couldn't handle it.

Step 1: Apply Fencing Logic to Softball

Step 2: Get robbed anyway.

I did my best saberist impression while running bases tonight during my softball game. My theory was that if I looked confident when I got on base, then regardless of how close it was, I'd be called safe. I think the theory would work if the ump was being impartial. I was called out on both close calls, one of which I was so sure of, I stood on base looking confused while everyone else was heading to the dugouts. Didn't work. Sigh.

I suppose it's all okay. People from the other team also mentioned (after the game) that I got robbed. I managed to mow over the third baseman, which was satisfying in its own way, too. My only regret is that I didn't drop my shoulder.

I went to fencing afterwards and fenced really well, I think. Next week should be interesting.

Vanderbilt's Dean Richard Memorial Open

Jeremy and I fenced in Vanderbilt's Dean Richard Memorial Open tournament this weekend. He won, but had to go through me first (the first time we've faced each other in a tournament in years). Yes, the Nation vs. Nation joke was pulled out again. It was a nice tournament and has been growing for the last several years. I hope that they'll start springing for grounded strips and directors soon. It could turn into a really nice tournament with those added touches (no pun intended).

Prêt? Flesche.

My fencing coach didn't mince words tonight. After my warm-up bout, he said, "Your flesche is terrible." For the next 45 minutes, I did nothing but flesche. Flesche to the right, to the left, hearing, "keep your hand up" and "don't stand up before you go". My legs are toast, my shoulder is toast, my brain is fried. I suppose the good news is that I managed to get in a few coach-approved flesches during my closing bout. I am definitely going to feel the workout for a few days.

Workout -- Fencing

I managed to make it to fencing practice with the VU club tonight. There were only four epeeists so it was a short night (probably good for my getting other things done tonight). I ran about a mile for warm up, did an augmented core routine, took my lesson, then wrapped up with some free fencing.

The lesson went fairly well, especially in the beginning when I was able to clearly think through what was being asked. My reactions were more natural, but taking last week off hurt my form a bit. Towards the end of the lesson, Doug was having me make decisions on distance, when to/not to attack coupled with disengages and lunges and I got overwhelmed and couldn't put two motions together. After several frustrating minutes, it turns out that I was watching his arm rather than his shoulder for distance and that was messing me up. Problem fixed and the lesson (finally) continued from there. There's really nothing like standing there, knowing exactly what you're supposed to do, being able to recite what you're trying to do, then having your body do something completely different than what your head is telling it to do. Solution: Stop Thinking.

I'm trying to apply things that I'm learning in lessons during free fencing, so I'm in that frustrating phase of trying to fix old habits, losing a lot of points, and implement things that I haven't mastered yet. On the whole, things went well, I just didn't get as many reps in as I would have liked.

St. Valentine's Massacre

Jeremy went to the annual St. Val's Massacre this last weekend and while I'm still waiting on results to link to, I'll go ahead and brag a bit. He won the tournament and renewed his "A" rating. This is helpful in that he'll get a better seeding with a "fresh" letter and should be especially helpful in the seeding at Div. I events (like Tucson coming up in April).

In other news, his blog has linkies for Jamie Tolston's Webshots pages for a few tournaments that she's photographed. Below is one of my favorite shots, which links to the IU Spring Open album. Excellent job, Jamie!

I got rhythm...

"I don't got rhythm"

I went fencing tonight. Normal drills, footwork, minor amounts of push-ups and sit-ups. Good stuff. We broke up into groups of four, worked on time drills where one person starts out down 0-3 with a minute left in the bout and has to come back for the win. It's a good drill--makes you think and be sort of aggressive. The other side is interesting, too, being up 3-0 and trying to hold your own through the rest of the bout.

After this, I was in line to take my lesson and happened upon a bit of a jump rope drill where you had to move your hands and feet in different ways at different times. For each swing of the rope, you switch your feet three times, making you lead the jump with a different foot each time. It was difficult. It took a little more rhythm than I am used to. Fun though.

I think I was at practice for 2.5 hours.
Now for dinner, a little work, and some sleep.

IU Spring (?) Open

This weekend was my first weekend home since classes started. IU hosted it's annual Spring Open and Jeremy and I went to support the club. It turned out to be a great turnout--an A2 tournament with 37 competitors. Nine of us were from Bloomington Fencing! We had at least one person fencing a tournament for the first time. Everyone did great. Check us out!

Update: Shannon pointed out that the resuls listed a pretty sneaky person twice. I e-mailed the organizer and got the following response:

We're trying to figure why Ask FRED is screwing up some of the results. One of the Cory A's is really Max Rockman. It is correct on Fencing Time, but is wrong when it is exported into Ask Fred. We're trying to fix it.

So, that's the story. I don't know which Cory is Max and which Cory is Cory.

Workout du Jour

Went fencing tonight. It was about two and a half hours of pretty constant stuff. It's really remarkable how quickly that time goes by. So, the workout went something like this:

• Run a little over a mile to loosen up. My mile was a little under 8 minutes, as close as I can tell.
• Run a suicide sprint. Just one. I love these...would have done a couple more, but there was a plan in place.
• Push-ups, sit-ups, leg lifts, a "pyramid" (holding yourself up using only your elbows and toes for some period of time--we did 45 seconds).
• Footwork...about 15 minutes
• Bladework...about 25 minutes
• Free fencing (I only got in one bout)
• Lesson, in which I wasn't a complete spazz.

I suppose I should mention the walking there and back with the gear. It's about a half-mile walk. I'm definitely warm after.

Anyway, it was a good night. Now I have to eat and work for a bit. Start over again tomorrow.