The best laid plans

It was spring break!! (still is, actually). I had time! I barely fought at all. Silly me. I fought on Palm Sunday at Grant's Tomb, but that was it. I didn't go to Nutley on Wendnesday becuase I was weak--I didn't want to make that long walk up hill with armor strapped to my back in bad weather. I figured, Oh, I'lly go to practice on Thursday instead. Ah, but Thursday was HOLY thursday, and Wantaugh practice is in a church, meaning it was cancelled. I looked into Hawethorne pratkice, but it too was cancelled. And, of course, there was no practice on Easter Sunday. I briefly thought about getting out of town to Albany this weekend, and fighitng at their Saturday practice, but saturday was Balfars Challenge, which I wasn't planning on going to but which everybody els would be attending. I did mange to workout.

WORKOUTS
I got in a bicycle ride, a good gym workout, a couple of long walks, Yoga class, and some work with the kettle bells and the indian clubs, so it wasn't a total waste. I had once had dreams of training hard all week of break, but ended up getting some freelance work, which is even more sedentary than teaching.

TECHNIQUES
All I was working on at Grant's Tomb was by defense against lefties and my thrusts.


FIGHTING
There were five of us in armor: Me, Gui, Tormundr, Tycho, and Samael.

Tormundr is a good person for me to fight because he is as tall as I am and he has a really good thrust. He tagged me with it twice, proving yet again that a good thrust is the best attack against an A Frame defense. I found that with the sword I was using (a bit over taped, tip heavy but with a heavy basket hilt) I was unable to launch a good counter attack from the A Frame. He is another person against whom an old fashioned Bellatrix attack works better.

Against Samael I did fine. He is a bit wild, and I was able to get him to over commit.

Tycho and Gui are both lefties. At first I used a airly standard leftie defense against Tycho--shiled way over to cover my right side, hanging guard to cover the left side of my head--but I wnated to try a variation of the A Frame defense against Tycho. I looked past the front of my shield but cocked the point to my right, to cover the right side of my leading leg instead of the left. I held my sword almost paralel to the foward edge of my shield. This proved really good defensively. The biggest whole I found when he threw a double strike, striking my sword and then moving to his left and striking again, but hat will be easy to compensate for. I hve a good thrust from there and off-die attacks but little in the way of onside head attacks.

Against Gui I realized that I've got a mental block. I keeptrying to fight toe-to -toe with gui and meet his agression with myown. Gui has more agression that a wolverine on steroids. THat is a losing game, ad I keepb getting my ass kicked. I'm not sure when or where I got that into my head, but it is why I've been losing to him so uch recently.

This was a good practice. It is 26 days until Crown Tourney. My next time in armor will be... I don't. Maybe Nutley on Wednesday, if not that then Hawethorne on Thursday. I'm hoping to be up in Albany this weekend and may seek out the practice up there.