It takes me a long time to get to the Iron Bog practice in South Jersey, especially if I'm not driving. Sometimes, I rent a car, sometimes I catch a ride with Gui (even though we both live in Brooklyn, we consider the Iron Bog practice to be our "home practice," mostly because it's where most of our friends are). Otherwise, I have to go by train and link up with one of my household members traveling down there from Central Jersey, like William McCrimmon or Jonathan Bayles. So yesterday, it was like this: I left the house at 9:30 AM. I took the subway to 34th Street. I was a bit early (the train runs every hour) so I grabbed a quick breakfast. Then I took the New Jersey Transit train to Newark Penn Station. It seems the Raritan Valley line wasn't running into Newark because of a cancer walk, so they put us on a shuttle bus. That got me to another train station, where I boarded the train and for Somerville. Jonathan met me there (I was really late), and we drove down to practice together. We got there an hour late. We fought. We went and grabbed dinner with some of the other fighter. We drove up to New Brunswick, where he dropped me off. It was a 50 minute wait for the next train to NYC. Exhausted, I took a cab home ($46, counting toll and tip). I got hom at 11:30 PM. Granted, there was a lot fo down time in there, including a long meal. But it's still an exhausting trip.
I've done a few things since I blogged last. I won the tournament at Coronation, defeating Sir Victor in the finals. I've practiced at Nutley as well as at Iron Bog. Mostly I've been managing pain.
Pain is a constant companion when you're a fighter, and it increases with experience. This training cycle has been tough. I had two very slight injuries at Ducal Challenge that didn't seem like much at the time, but are still bugging me. I missed a shot and torqued my wrist, and, when fighting Duke Hanse, I strained my shoulder. I have shoulder pain fairly often. I've got bursitis that flares up. Amd tennis elbow. Pretty much my whole arm, really. My technique is pretty good, so I don't put a lot of strain on my shoulders, but it still comes in. Plus, I sleep on it wrong a lot. This isn't that. This is a pin-point pain in the front of my shoulder, that only hits when I move in one certain way. Then, I strained my Achilles while running. I rested a coupled of days and ran again, and it got worse.
So, you manage. First of all, you rest. To I haven't run for a couple of weeks. I skipped three practices. Then you rehab. I stretched a bit more. I've got some light Indian clubs I use for rehab, and I started a rehab routine with them. Push ups are good for rehab, so I kept doing those. I stuck to the wiffle ball bat for pell work. Tiger balm. CBD Oil. You get better. Rest is the most important thing.
Here's some video of me fighting Arne at practice two weeks ago.
(in which I twice ask Arne to use my shield as a coffee table).
Truly, in these, my targeting doth suck. My blow angle is way low. Also, I just seem slower than I've been lately. I fought better yesterday, but I'm still not where I was at Pennsic.
I wanted to tighten up my defense and simplify my offense, and I've don't a pretty good job of that. Yesterday I foguht two sets with Ronald, plus sets with Sir Bill, Sir Harold, Sir Jonathan, Sterling and Bran. They were all good, tough sets, and I was pretty sharp, especially my defense. Yesterday I also got my new sword from Bill (he's my sword gaffer). It's heavier but balanced more toward the hilt, witha stainless steel Bedford basket, instead of the plastic one I've been using. It is what I wanted. It's really fast! But because it doesn't have as much of the mass at the tip, it's hitting lighter and bouncing back. This was to be expected, which is why I needed to get it two weeks ahead of time. Much pell work is called for.
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But it's time now set all the rest of that aside. Crown Tournament is in 12 days from now. I will try to be in armor one more time this week.
