I’ve only been an armor four times: twice at Iron Bog practice (including today), once at Nutley practice, and once at the tournament of the Roses. And each one I fought approximately 25 fights (a few more today). That’s not very much, but it was about all I was up to between my foot injury, and my shoulder injury, and everything else. Crown is in two weeks, and I have not been training as much as I would’ve liked. Injury does that. However, I fought very well at roses, and I expect to have fun and do well.
I’ve added a little yoga my daily workouts. My back really needs it. Still doing 50 push-ups, 50 squats, and 100 strikes on the pill every day. While I’ve cycled bit, I am unable to run at the moment.
I’d like to talk about roses. We fought for Duchess Brenwyn The Fair. It was a blast. It is a great honor to champion as elegant and noble a lady as her. The format was like this: each lady of the rose entered a team of up to five heavy fighters, five rapier fighters, an archer and an artisan. My part was strictly in the heavy fighting. Whne one rose challenged another, fighter on each team would pair with another. The lowest order of precedence on one team challenged across and then it switched to the other team and back-and-forth. This meant that, as the royal pier on my team, I never got to challenge anybody. Which was kind of awesome. It meant I never knew what I was going to get. There were a total of 10 teams, and we only had four fighters so once I doubled up and fought two people on one team. I only lost one round, and that was to Victor, who totally destroyed me. The only knight I thought was Wilhelm von Ostenbruck who. I beat two to 1. Oh, did I mention that every round was best two out of three? This was one of the most awesome tournaments I’ve bought in since, well, since the William Marshall turning at Pennsic actually. I loved it. My day ended like this: Ten matches, 8 wins, one loss, one draw. I matched weapons, but all that meant was one great sword fight (the draw) and one two sword fight. I won most of my bouts 2-0.
Here’s us VS. Ethel Dreda's team. That's my squire Padraig fighting Ionis. At about 3 Minutes you can see Victor kicking my ass. By the way: I cannot heap enough praise on the three unbelted fighters on our team: Padraig, Dirk, and Ronan. They fought honorably and very well!
Videos are by Cat Woody. Here's some more:
Here’s me in my two sword fight.
Me and Willie.
