Rome, Barcelona
writing this entry while sitting on a plane in Rome, waiting for the flight to take off an hour late due to a worker strike at Paris Charles de Gaulle. I’m not optimistic that the flight is going to go, given the luck I’ve had with travel so far on this trip. A quick recap:
--my flight from NYC to Paris had an unruly passenger. We were about to cross the Atlantic and they turned back to kick the passenger off in Bangor, Maine. We were about to land and then they went back up in the air because we had too much fuel to land there. We flew out over the sea, dumped fuel, and came back down to land again before we were told Bangor didn’t have the facilities we needed. So we had to go back to Boston. The cops came, arrested the guy (who was apparently drunk or on drugs and going through cabinets in the galley….until he passed out as the plane went to land and didn’t even realize we were landing to arrest him). So I got to Paris 3 hours late, missed my connecting flight to Rome and got rebooked.
--Of course, my fencing bag didn’t come until 3 days later. Luckily, I had carried on all of my equipment except for epees, so I had all my stuff to fence with and just had to borrow epees from kindly Canadians and the Italian federation. The sheer fear that started when they told me they had “no idea where my bag is” subsided when they re-discovered it a few hours later.
For this flight, though, because I’m going 5 days early and its just within Europe and I had a 3 hour layover in Paris, I checked EVERYTHING. And I’m getting nervous….
Anyway, the tournament was a mixed one. I went 4-2 in my pools, which I was quite happy with for a Grand Prix and for my first world cup in at least 9 months. It’s as good as I’ve ever done in a Grand Prix pool round. I lost my first bout 2-3 in overtime to Descouts from France (who won my pool overall) and thus was quite close to going 5-1. That would have been nice, going straight through to the 64 and the next day.
The good thing was I showed mental toughness because I was only 1-2 and still had to fence the highest seeded person in my pool (Aleksjeva from Estonia). I rallied and beat her 5-2 and this gave me the confidence to win the rest of the bouts. Good stuff.
I had a bye to the 96, didn’t have to fence the 128. Then I had to fence Samuelson from Sweden. She is ranked #1 in juniors in the world, but is nowhere near that high for seniors. She is VERY tall and holds her hand very high. I fenced well the first ½ of the bout, and tied it up at 8-8 (made a nice toe touch to tie it), but then right at that moment she adjusted well and scored 4 quick ones in a row. I was down 12-8 going into the final period. Wasn’t able to pull it out and lost 10-15. Like Maya’s bout from the other tourney with Nisima, I don’t think the score reflects how close most of the bout was.
When I went to review the tape, I was prepared to see myself static, moving poorly and making lots of mistakes, because that’s how I FELT. But actually when I reviewed it, I was quite pleased with what I saw. There was just this critical moment where she adjusted and I didn’t that determined the bout. But overall I made some nice touches too. I had a weird problem that I don’t usually have with missing right over people’s right shoulder. I cant tell if its coming from distance, timing, or hand position. This plagued me throughout the tournament.
In team, we won 2 matches and lost 2 matches and ended up 11th. Not bad. We lost to Poland to make the 8 (they really steamrolled us and had the momentum the whole time, we were definitely rushed). Lacey didn’t have her equipment either and she was struggling with weapons and the uniform this whole time. We were not mentally ready for that bout. Too bad, we have definitely done better against them in the past.
Then we fenced Hong Kong and won decisively to be in the 9-12 bracket. I was happy with how I fenced in this bout and I went +13 touches.
Then we fenced Russia to try for the 9-10 bracket and we *barely* lost 43-45. We were always within one touch of each other throughout almost the whole bout. I fenced the second to last one versus Shutova and I found the timing several times in a row and got up by 3 touches (I was at 38-35 and going to 40). I left down my guard a bit and she managed to pull ahead and win 40-39 I think. Very frustrating because it was within my hands to put Maya into the final bout versus Logunova with a 3 touch lead. So annoying. Maya scored 1 nice touch, but we ended up losing 45-43. Dommage!
Then we beat Switzerland nicely, I don’t have the final score in my head, but we were always up and it was good.
OKAY UPDATE: Now I’m in Barcelona, I made it here. Of course my bag was one day late, but I have it now and all good. I’m going to go to training at the little club I went to last year tonight, but it starts at 8:30!! So late, that’s crazy….
Gillian and I went on a run on Montjuic, I found the competition hall, and I’m definitely going to have to take either a taxi or the shuttle from the host hotel. Then we walked around town, went to the Picasso museum, ate yummy foods, and I got a haircut. We are relaxing in the room now, its lovely.
--my flight from NYC to Paris had an unruly passenger. We were about to cross the Atlantic and they turned back to kick the passenger off in Bangor, Maine. We were about to land and then they went back up in the air because we had too much fuel to land there. We flew out over the sea, dumped fuel, and came back down to land again before we were told Bangor didn’t have the facilities we needed. So we had to go back to Boston. The cops came, arrested the guy (who was apparently drunk or on drugs and going through cabinets in the galley….until he passed out as the plane went to land and didn’t even realize we were landing to arrest him). So I got to Paris 3 hours late, missed my connecting flight to Rome and got rebooked.
--Of course, my fencing bag didn’t come until 3 days later. Luckily, I had carried on all of my equipment except for epees, so I had all my stuff to fence with and just had to borrow epees from kindly Canadians and the Italian federation. The sheer fear that started when they told me they had “no idea where my bag is” subsided when they re-discovered it a few hours later.
For this flight, though, because I’m going 5 days early and its just within Europe and I had a 3 hour layover in Paris, I checked EVERYTHING. And I’m getting nervous….
Anyway, the tournament was a mixed one. I went 4-2 in my pools, which I was quite happy with for a Grand Prix and for my first world cup in at least 9 months. It’s as good as I’ve ever done in a Grand Prix pool round. I lost my first bout 2-3 in overtime to Descouts from France (who won my pool overall) and thus was quite close to going 5-1. That would have been nice, going straight through to the 64 and the next day.
The good thing was I showed mental toughness because I was only 1-2 and still had to fence the highest seeded person in my pool (Aleksjeva from Estonia). I rallied and beat her 5-2 and this gave me the confidence to win the rest of the bouts. Good stuff.
I had a bye to the 96, didn’t have to fence the 128. Then I had to fence Samuelson from Sweden. She is ranked #1 in juniors in the world, but is nowhere near that high for seniors. She is VERY tall and holds her hand very high. I fenced well the first ½ of the bout, and tied it up at 8-8 (made a nice toe touch to tie it), but then right at that moment she adjusted well and scored 4 quick ones in a row. I was down 12-8 going into the final period. Wasn’t able to pull it out and lost 10-15. Like Maya’s bout from the other tourney with Nisima, I don’t think the score reflects how close most of the bout was.
When I went to review the tape, I was prepared to see myself static, moving poorly and making lots of mistakes, because that’s how I FELT. But actually when I reviewed it, I was quite pleased with what I saw. There was just this critical moment where she adjusted and I didn’t that determined the bout. But overall I made some nice touches too. I had a weird problem that I don’t usually have with missing right over people’s right shoulder. I cant tell if its coming from distance, timing, or hand position. This plagued me throughout the tournament.
In team, we won 2 matches and lost 2 matches and ended up 11th. Not bad. We lost to Poland to make the 8 (they really steamrolled us and had the momentum the whole time, we were definitely rushed). Lacey didn’t have her equipment either and she was struggling with weapons and the uniform this whole time. We were not mentally ready for that bout. Too bad, we have definitely done better against them in the past.
Then we fenced Hong Kong and won decisively to be in the 9-12 bracket. I was happy with how I fenced in this bout and I went +13 touches.
Then we fenced Russia to try for the 9-10 bracket and we *barely* lost 43-45. We were always within one touch of each other throughout almost the whole bout. I fenced the second to last one versus Shutova and I found the timing several times in a row and got up by 3 touches (I was at 38-35 and going to 40). I left down my guard a bit and she managed to pull ahead and win 40-39 I think. Very frustrating because it was within my hands to put Maya into the final bout versus Logunova with a 3 touch lead. So annoying. Maya scored 1 nice touch, but we ended up losing 45-43. Dommage!
Then we beat Switzerland nicely, I don’t have the final score in my head, but we were always up and it was good.
OKAY UPDATE: Now I’m in Barcelona, I made it here. Of course my bag was one day late, but I have it now and all good. I’m going to go to training at the little club I went to last year tonight, but it starts at 8:30!! So late, that’s crazy….
Gillian and I went on a run on Montjuic, I found the competition hall, and I’m definitely going to have to take either a taxi or the shuttle from the host hotel. Then we walked around town, went to the Picasso museum, ate yummy foods, and I got a haircut. We are relaxing in the room now, its lovely.