Armor for the first time in months

 I got into Armor on Saturday. It was the first time in months. I wasn't sure what it would be like. I mean, if we're ever invaded by an army of pells, I'm all set, but actual fighting is another thing. I had not fought in six months, since Aedult Swim. Before that, I'd had three health issues last fall, missed Crown, and took two months off.  Really, since Pennsic 2019 until last Friday, I think I had been in armor six times. So Saturday makes seven. That's a far cry from when I used to practice four times a week. I miss those days. I miss being able to do that. 

I was in a new to me helmet, a heavy, large bascinet that I was able to pad up with some of the anti-concussion foam Icefalcon sells, plus the skull cap that Dag manufacturers. So an inch of padding, three densities. That worked well. 

I took the train out to Duke Ronald's. It was just me and Baron Jonathan in armor. Jonthan is one of my favorite training buddies. He has very fast hands, so it's a great sword and shield workout. He's also good at other forms. We did three sets -- a long sword and shield set, a sword and buckler set, and then a single sword set. 

I felt good in the helmet. He tattooed my leg (I was using Ron's shield, which is narrower and about two inches shorter). I felt my targeting off. I had some trouble figuring out what to do. My shoulders ached afterward from the work. I was using my heavy sword, which I really don't like, but it allowed me to use all sorts of Bellatrix/Flieg heavy sword tricks -- momentum shots, slow moving shots, etc. I had some really good leg shots, but my targeting was way off on my snaps. I was throwing right into the middle of the shield. That was probably the weight of my armor and of the sword. 

I did not work on any specific technique. I was not using my footwork at all (odd, since I've been practicing it). 

I felt good and had a very good time. 

I don't know when my next time in armor will be. I'm not sure we will ever hold another Crown. 

COVID

Here it is, July. Covid has hit us hard. We lost one of our best friends, my sweetie's "Gay Best Friend" / Other (Gay) Husband in the first few weeks. Olan Montgomery, one of the most talented artists/photographers/stylists/actors/directors I'e ever worked with. He was also a drag queen and an 80s club kid, and he had great stories about Andy Warhol (and one biting story about Donald Trump). It was a devastating loss for us both personally and professionally. In addition to being our closest friend and one of our chosen family, he was also our wig maker, photographer, acting partner, and sometime director. As an actor he was just becoming successful, with a recurring roll on last season's Stranger Things, and a couple of big film rolls in the past year. He had just booked his first official guest star spot, on the Righteous Gem Stones. And he was attached to *every* film project I was working on. His loss makes it that much harder to get any of them financed. But we also lose the kindest soul I think I've ever met, someone who loved us dearly and whom we loved as well, someone who was so nice that nobody he met didn't love him (well, that probably doesn't include Donald Trump). He can't be replaced professionally, let alone the gaping hole his passing left in our hearts. We did inherit his marvelous old cat.  He was one of the first New Yorker's to get the disease, and he died in April, unfortunately after being taken off the vent and moved out of the ICU. Two days before he died, Jimmy Lee, a local SCA person I'd known for all of the 20 years I've been in Ostgardr, passed away. He was somebody I always liked and enjoyed talking to, an archer in a Mongolian household, and a very talented stained glass artist. That hit the local SCA hard. Then, about a month later, we lost Liam St. Liam, a Tyger of the East and probably the most popular and well liked person in the whole SCA. Liam and I were great friends. We shared a lot. Like Olan, he was more like family than a friend. He was a great sports writer, a great philosopher, a quintessential Southie (though he was actually from Rhode Island). He supplied more than half the photographs in my book. I can't describe how important Liam was in my life. He'd been in a nursing home after having suffered a stroke a few years before, and when he caught the bug he went fairly quickly (at least much quicker than Olan had). I was heartbroken once again. In addition to that, the virus took two of my school colleagues, and Terrance McNally, whom I can't say I knew well, but at least I'd gotten to meet years ago. And, of course, while I didn't know Nick Cordero, I know two people who were close to him. I think I'd met Mark Blum once, and certainly we had a lot of folks in common, both via theatre and via CUNY. Somehow, I missed his passing, and just found out about it only day before yesterday.

And then there is the social distancing, the monotony, being unable to do ANY of the things I loved doing -- not just SCA, but theatre, movies, dining out, shopping in Manhattan, sporting events, all of it. And teaching, the thing that keeps the lights on and me sane. So it's been rough.

What is the point of mentioning that in this blog? Well, here's what it has to do with fighting. Never give up. Never stop training. Never.

I live to fight in Crown Tourney. I've never made any attempt to hide that fact. I fight in every crown I can, and I've fought in 100 of them so far. One year -- the year I was researching my dissertation, and was traveling back and forth between New York and California regularly -- I fought in five of them -- both of them in the East, all three in the West, and two of them (the fall crowns) I fought with a broken leg -- the leg I'd broken in the Belted Champions battle at Pennsic (I killed the guy who helped me break it and then walked off the field. Still my proudest "fight club" moment). But now, for the first time since I started fighting in crown almost 40 years ago, I have gone more than a year without fighting in one -- since May 2019, due first to the blood pressure spike I had last spring, and now to the fact that the actual SCA (because to me, E-SCA is not the real SCA) is shut down. But I'm still training. Every day.

I haven't fought since AEdult Swim V on February 15.  That is also the last post in this blog. I haven't even had my armor since then.  I left it with William McCrimmon after our ride home, and then we went into lock down, and then he caught the disease (he's recovered now).

There's no fighting right now in the East Kingdom. Some places have been allowed to hold non-contact socially distanced practices. I'm sure some people are getting together and fighting in their back yards. Not me. Right now there is a very good chance we won't hold a crown tournament this year, since Tindal has said that there will be no Royal events until the border with Canada is opened, and I don't see that happening any time soon. I suspect by the time we have a Crown again, I will be 57, and will have not fought in a Crown in two years.

And that's why I train every single day.

My daily training is what I've written about before. I hit the pell at least 100 times, do 50 push ups and 50 squats every day. I also do footwork drills a couple times a week, and mix in two handed drills and two stick drills. I work in my Indian Clubs sometimes, mostly to keep my shoulders loose.  When it' rains outside, I do my pell work indoors. Currently, I run three days a week, at least a mile, sometimes more, with a mask or gaiter around my neck, that I can pull up when anybody approaches. A couple weeks ago, I ran a little over two miles with a surgical mask on pretty much the whole time. That was hard, but I look at it kind of like running at altitude. Most other days I get a walk in, about 10,000 steps. My next task is to get a mail shirt, I haven't owned one since the 80s, to train in a few times a week.

Because you should never stop training.

Someday we will get back into armor. Some day we will hold tournaments again. Some day we will hold crown again. I intend to be ready. And so should you. Train every single day.

For fun, here's a good picture of me from Aedult Swim. It's by Ursus. Go here and check his photos out.

Photo by Tim Tyson

#traineveryday

Fight Fight Fight and health

It's been awhile since I posted here. I'm kind of losing the drive to keep posting. I also took some time off from fighting for a medical issue. That issue has been corrected.

TRAINING
Is limited to my normal workout of pushups, squats, and pell work daily. I've run a couple of times on the treadmill, and once outside, but walking and stairs is most of my cardio (12,000 steps yesterday=6 miles).

TECHNIQUE
I've not been working on anything specifically. I've been using Count Gemeni's wards, for the most part-- at extreme range fighting a strong high open form (bellatrix), at medium range a weak high closed form (Von Drachenklau), and at close range a strong high closed form (almost everybody else). I still mix in a few A-frame.

FIGHTING
My health issues were three fold. The first issue was the possibility of a blood clot having developed at Pennsic from wrapping my knee too tight after I was injured (see earlier post). My D-Demer test was positive, and my leg was swollen, but two ultrasounds revealed nothing.

The second issue was a concussion suffered at the Cloisters. I developed concussion issues after I hit myself in the head with a sword while doing pell work years ago (no, really), and suffered my first recognizable fighting concussion a year or so later, (i'd probably had at least one before, but this was the first one with classic symptoms), when Gui accidentally face punched me at Acheron, resulting in a concussion that I felt as a pain at the back of my head from my brain bouncing off the back of my skull. I took time off from fighting, told my doctor, and retired that helmet. I changed my helmet and padded it with anti-concussion padding from Windrose. It worked, but my new helmet did not allow for any padding beyond that.  I stopped getting my bell wrung, but at Pennsic I did have a couple of headaches. Then, at Cloisters, I got hammered literally, with a big hammer-headed polearm. The next day I had a migraine that was pretty bad. It went away so I fought that Thursday at Hawethorne, and had another migraine the next day. I had concussion symptoms for a couple of weeks, and ended up taking a lot of time off for reason three.

The third issue was a spell of really high blood pressure. This was  result of a lot of things -- pain from the concussion, fatigue, work stress, general politics stress, producing a show stress, and--especially--SCA stress brought on by the arrest of Louis Rondon/Lousi de Castillo, whom long-time readers of this blog will know from mention of our bouts over the last few years, particularly the drown that he won last May. At the same time, my doctor changed my medication. I'd been really dehydrated at Pennsic, and I asked her to take me off the hydrochlorothiazide, a diurettic. My blood pressure started going up, and so she switched me from Lisinopril to Nephedipine. It this time I was suffering from fatigue and headaches. The neephedipine had a lot of side effects, including chest pains and shortness of breath. The first or second day I was on it, I went to the ER with blood pressure of 198/154, which is very bad.  Eventually, I was switched back to my old regimen of hydrochlorothiazide and lisinopril, which had worked before. I just need to hydrate a LOT (as I type this I had another bout of fatigue and headache, which is dehydration). I missed Crown Tourney for the first time in years as a result -- doctor's orders -- and ended up taking about three months off from fighting.

My health is good. I had a great stress test and echo. My BP is 110/70. Both my GP and my cardiologist have cleared me to fight.

I'm back to fighting, but in my Crusader helmet, which is big and heavy and has a lot more padding in it, but has lousy visibility. I've got a big heavy bascinet I'm going to pad up, but it's not the period I like to fight in, and it doesn't have an aventail yet, which is an aesthetic that I think is necessary for bascinets. But it it will do for the moment. Long term I am going to go to an open faced helmet with a suspension liner. I've considered for some time going to a late period rig with a shoulder mounted helm (Icefalcom makes one I really like) but I would not want to fight in crown in that helmet, for a lot of reasons.

Meanwhile, I have been fighting a bit lately. I had a great time at Aedult Swim this year. I was only there for one day, but I fought 18 opponents, which works out to right around 100 fights (I fought at least five fights with al of them, and more with some). I ended my day with fights with Duke Rangvaldr, in my book one of the top ten fighters in the SCA. I killed him twice (he killed me five times). Any time I lay stick on Rangvaldr I count as a great day. I also had a great set with Duke Christoph from Atlantia. The only Easterner I fought was Pelandreas, but he's from Quebec, so I never see him anyway. He will likely be a tough out at Crown. I did get him once with a good face thrust, and fought him pretty well over all.  got to fight a couple of those Ansteoran two sword fighters too. At first I was totally dominated by that style, which I'd never fought, but after four or five bouts I started winning most of my fights. It mostly requires attacks down the middle. After that I fought a knight using a more standard two-sword style, and I did well.

Here is some video of one fight from SCA tally, starting a bit out of focus. I'm so slow! I also wonder why I didn't take that backhand. The rest of the video is cool too.


It is exactly 60 days until Crown. My next time in armor will be Nutley next week, and my tournament with be IceDragon in Aethelmarc on March 15.