Fencing: BUCS Nationals

Cheers folks!

Today I'm doing a quick recap of yesterday's BUCS Nationals tournament in Sheffield.
The day started really early for me: At 9 am, I met one of my team mates to take the train to Sheffield. Before, I bought some munchies for myself (mostly chocolate bars and cheesy pasta, as a reasonable athlete would do).
When we arrived in Sheffield at around 11 am, we quickly reported our presence at the entrance of the competition centre, then went inside the hall for warm-up. After we had finished warming up and trying out the pistes, it was almost time to begin. We hurried inside the hall to see which groups we were in and then got ready for the poules (first round: usually groups of 6-7 people of which you have to fence everyone up to 5 points). At that point, my excitement was probably at its highest, I felt like I could barely breathe.
My group was quite a hard one, there were many fencers with a top ranking in the UK, so I didn't think I would make it at all. But when I stepped onto the piste for the first time, my excitement was gone and all of a sudden, I felt like I could actually have a chance. I did really well in the poules, winning one match and scoring quite a few points. After everyone was finished, there was a lunch break and we had to wait for the results.
I met my other team mates, we had lunch together and discussed our expectations for the next round. Everyone was really proud of me which made me really happy. My hopes and chances for getting into the knock-out round were really high, but unfortunately I didn't make it. Still, it wasn't too much of a bummer for me. For my first tournament, coming in 62nd place out of 73 is not bad at all, considering how many experienced fencers participated. After I had been cut, I went along to watch my other foilist team mate's matches. She did really well, coming 7th in the end- so all in all, the day had been really successful for us.
After we returned home, I just quickly ate dinner and went straight to bed.  I still wonder how I made it to morning training today...

Well, I guess that was it for today! See you again soon.

Random: Fencing problems

This is actually cross-posted from my Tumblr, but I found it quite funny, so I decided to share it with you. These are some of the 'problems' I've come across during my 5 months of fencing foil. Of course, those are not real problems, but only funny tidbits of things that happened to me during training. Enjoy them with a grain of salt and lots of humour: 

- being afraid of breaking your blade

- finally making the perfect plan and then getting fucked over by your opponent

- freaking out even if you know you shouldn't (Why am I running away again? Okay, okay, I got this... OMG holy shit! Nevermind, let's just escape...!) 

- not flinching even if someone comes lunging at you (Why am I so confident in my parries but not in actually hitting them?)

- opponent and you both missing target about ten times until they finally score

- this sentence: "Oh, I didn't realise you were left-handed..." #thankyouverymuchmotherfucker 

- people having trouble shaking your hand after a fight (Jeez, just give me your left hand while I give you my right hand- this is chuffin' easy: NOT THE HAND WITH THE GLOVE! )

- being sure you hit them but the light didn't go off

- involuntarily doing a split and then not being able to walk properly for days (Stairs, I fucking hate you...)

- having bruises all over your body and people wondering how the hell you got them

I guess that's all...