I fenced Div II yesterday. Sort of. I knew going into it that it was primarily an excuse to spend my weekend in the venue - it seems too silly to fly acorss the country simply to watch and listen, but quite normal to do so to fence, even if only in an event for which one is feeling neither prepared nor enthusiastic. (Shhhh... it makes sense in my head...) I currently have the time and money to do things like this, though, and I know that these opportunities will be few and far between soon enough.

I knew going into it that winning wasn't really my goal and wasn't a realistic goal. I currently work 80ish hours a week, fence about 2 hours a week, and generally get less than 6 hours of sleep a night. I haven't had a day off in over a month. I am not in optimal form for living, let alone competing. I woke up and didn't want to move - out of gas the moment I finished refueling. I went though my standard warm-up, though. And then I got to my pool, which was on the strip closest to the smoothie stand. I don't know what it was, but there was some sort of smell at the strip that absolutely turned my stomach. So I fenced my pool exhausted and nauseated, and did not do terribly well.

It was a good opportunity to think about other things, though, particularly the difference between aimlessly complaining about how hard life is, which seems a bit masturbatory, giving yourself excuses for why you're not doing well, which is basically a version of refusing to compete (or at least refusing to own your result), and taking stock of your toolbox for the day, which is a vital part of competing. I felt absolutely crappy through my pool, and knew how easy it would be to make excuses for myself. Any one of my excuses would have been a perfectly valid reason to have a crappy day, sure, but I just didn't want to be owned by my excuses.

About halfway through the pool, I started to figure out how to use this information. I stopped warming up before my bouts, because it just made me feel sick to my stomach. When I got onto the strip, I didn't try to really push and pull my opponents around, which is usually a huge part of my game. Instead, I let myself move slowly, relying on full-speed to kick in instinctively when necessary, which it did. I fenced a lot better in those last bouts. Still a terrible pool, but a useful experience.

I sent the afternoon strip-coaching Peach, which helped drive home a bit more of this information. She was, understandably, bone tired from fencing in Croatia, then spending the previous two days doing Vet 60 and Div I. Her main goal was to maintain technique through her exhaustion. She manged to do this in her pool, but dropped a very unusual three bouts, which meant that she had tougher DEs. She was down in the break in her first DE and I coached her that she had a choice - she could either decide to use whatever she had left in her legs and win, or she could choose to not do so. Up to her.

And that's the thing of it, it really is always a choice. How to treat the aches and complaints, which are always extremely valid. Are they going to define your day, or are you going to take stock of them as part of your internal inventory, and then move on decide if you're going to try to win? And the really hard part is that you don't get to make that decision once and be done with it. You have to make it again every time you get into en garde, every time you decide to attack that opening, every time you push to escape your opponent's attack, over and over again. And when you come back with a different response - "no, you know, I really don't feel like retreating, sure you can hit me." - then you've lost the bout. And that's the problem with interpreting your inventory as an excuse - it allows you to lose in advance, before the bout ever starts.

I do sometimes wonder why I'm still doing any competition at all. (Yeah, my rationalization above can sound pretty silly to me, too, even if it is why I signed up for this event.) It's hard to internalize these ideas, though, without still competing. I've recently been reading Sam Sheridan's book, A Fighter's Heart, in which he details his jouney from muiy thai into MMA and, from there, through a wide variety of other combat sports. He writes about how he had very good reasons to not compete in his tournaments (messed up ribs, opponent weighed in 20 lbs over weight class, etc.), but still took his fights because he didn't want to be owned by the excuses.* Reading that is fine and dandy, but doing it is completey different. And realizing again just how often one has to make the choice about whether or not to fight is vital. I've recently been thinking about that choice in other situations, but couldn't quite connect it to fencing without actually doing it. So, yes, I'll just have to keep making that choice for myself, too, whenever I can. It's a good way to keep learning, and I do like learning. And it keeps me in better touch with my students' experiences, which is vital.

* I'm about halfway through the book and am greatly enjoying it. It's primarily an exploration of why we fight and so enjoy fighting. As he adds different combat sports to his vocaulary, he talks with those fighters about why they fight, getting a wide variety of answers. I've also been particularly interested in his explorations of how each of these indvidual sports is also a team sport.