Unexpected

Today, I fenced in the Cambridge County Individual 'MegaFoil' Competition. Recently, with competitions, I have been intending to just score points, and try to fence my best. I frequently see people smacking themselves over the head in exasperation and fury as they loose matches. I want to just fence at a competition and feel completely relaxed.
There were two rounds of poules. I won the first set, loosing only five points, and came second in the second set, loosing one match and two other points. The man I lost to was also in the first poule. I had beaten him 5-2. He then beat me 5-2. The DE's got underway, and I told myself to remain focused and to remain calm. I won the first match, and then the second, and then the third. I hadn't been expecting it, but I was suddenly in the final. I didn't really have time to feel shocked, and I was just trying to remain calm. This became quite hard when I realised my opponent was none other than the man who I had beaten in the first poule, who had then beaten me. He was obviously a favourite to win, seeing as though he had most of the room in his corner. Every time he scored a hit, applause rang in the air, along with shouts of 'Come on!' and other such encouragement. There were only three people from my club backing me. It was fairly discouraging, but it made me all the more determined to score hits off him.

Most of that match passed in a blur. Eventually, I began the final three minutes with the score of 10-10. My opponent promptly scored the first hit, much to the crowd's pleasure. It was then that I made a counter-attack, expecting him to parry it. Instead, I hit him just below the arm. 11-11. I then realised what had happened. My opponent had grown relaxed with the first hit, and he had let his guard slip. This seemed to spark the idea off in me that he was more than beatable. He was just any other fencer. Any fencer can make mistakes. They just need to be exploited. Confidence and adrenaline running, I attacked. After a minute and a half, I had beaten him, 15-11. Afterwards, people asked me what it felt like to have won the competition. To be honest, I didn't feel anything. It was simply a quiet satisfaction of my achievement, and confidence in my abilities. It was a good day, all in all. I felt great then, but I'm exhausted now! That's probably one thing that was expected.

Running on Empty

Despite what the title may seem like, I'm not going to write about the film starring River Phoenix or anything like that. This is going to be about how we feel while we fence. I noticed on Wednesday that we feel different things when fencing a variety of opponents. When I first began fencing, I became nervous around anyone wearing a white jacket or breeches. Since I have now fenced a variety of opponents, I don't really feel anything when I fence people. I feel calm, in a way. I only begin to feel pressured in a competition, in a DE. When I feel pressured, I tend to increase the pace a lot, but this leads to wild parries and bad footwork more often than not. Very rarely, my adrenaline kicks in. I can't really say for sure when this happens. I think that I get energised when I am fencing someone who I subconsciously want to do well against.

We don't always get emotional while we fence. There are also times when we have various states of fatigue. Since my injury, I become tired more often, but I always try to work to the best of my ability. In my opinion, there is tired, fatigued and empty. Tired is when we feel a slight nagging feeling in our muscles, telling us to slow down. Fatigued is when we feel drained, and feel as if we can't go on anymore. Empty is a feeling that I have only had twice in my fencing career. It occurred for the second time on Wednesday. It happens when you bypass tired, and then appear at fatigue. My legs were seriously aching, but I kept telling myself that fatigue is a message, and messages can be ignored. I pressed on, and I hit empty. It was very strange. I couldn't actually feel anything, and I felt as if I could keep on fencing for hours. Nothing seemed to be tiring anymore. Perhaps the strangest thing was that I wasn't thinking. I mean that I was thinking as in: functioning. Whenever my opponent attacked me, I was able to respond very quickly. After the fight, this feeling promptly left, and fatigue set in. Empty is very weird for me, but it is also very good. Maybe this forms the trance-like meditation that Buddhist's and Samurai seek for. If it is, I have only seen a glimpse of it. Or maybe I was just exhausted. Who knows?

Mocks

I have returned from my exams, and I have a few results so far. Some of them are pretty good, and some of them are not as good. I noticed that the subjects that I did well in are the subjects that I actually enjoy doing. If I don't like a subject, I tend to spend less time doing it. This is a direct parallel to my fencing style. I perform moves that I generally like, or that work on certain opponents. If something I do on the piste doesn't work, or if I don't like the feel of it, I often don't do it. Because of this, I feel that I should spend more time attempting to improve my lesser skills, instead of using something that I feel is easy. I shall try this experiment, and see how it goes.