Hard work and bruises

This past weekend, I had a choice of going to a tournament in Myrtle Beach with a few teammates, or staying home and attending weekend epee camp at our school. With Nationals quickly approaching, I decided that the latter was much more beneficial to my fencing.

I think, however, that "beneficial" is a definite understatment. I fenced my normal lesson and boutwork on Friday evening for about 2 hours. Saturday I fenced almost consistantly from 9AM to 8PM. Saturday, I had quite a bit of trouble getting out of bed, but made it to camp about 10 AM, and fenced again until around 5PM.

I learned an entire new cache of skills. Moves that I knew could be done, but I myself had never been taught before. For example, I can now flick! I had the motion down almost immediately, since it's fairly similar to sabre. I just need to work on my accuracy in the next few weeks. I think it'll be pretty handy against girls. From my observations, women don't usually flick at all in epee until they are high level "elite" kind of athletes. We'll see how it works at our next tournament, as well as at Nationals. Worth a try, right?

There were all sorts of funky infighting moves and other things too.

The bad news: I can barely move today!!!!!! I am so covered in bruises from being hit in drills over and over and over again. My body looks as though it has been beaten continuously by a not-so-nice person all weekend. I have sore muscles that I didn't even know existed. Ouch.

For the first time in quite a while, I feel good about my fencing. I feel good about the practice I got, and good about the skills I feel I got the chance to polish over the weekend. :)