Saturday morning training for me and my daughter. She had a great lesson and was really fired up. I did all-right was still favoring my knee and the floor in our training space for Saturday morning is sub-optimal (very slick laminate floor). In response to the knee and the floor, did a new drill to loosen my shoulder: pick hand, disengage, pick hand disengage (reading the disengage each time) then hit arm then body. I like it, but am not so good at it yet. Asked to do the drills on the piste lines so that I could spot-check my T-Bone feet. Coach gave me a couple corrections. All in all a good lesson.

No practice Saturday night because we are attending the wifes family reunion.

Sunday: BCAF VET 3-Weapon tournament. A hotly contested E1 event.
I met my general performance benchmarks for a tournament:
Exit the pools seeded higher than my initial seeding (success, initially seeded 3rd, attained 2nd seed)
Place higher than my pool seeding (moderate success, placed 2nd).

My knee felt good all day.

Broke one weapon (snapped at the tang, universally considered weird) in my last pool bout. Executing a flick the whole thing came apart and I apparently hit myself in the foot (initially I thought I had gotten the touch). The goods were left dangling there, fully operational, looking like an exploded view of an epee, held together with the spaghetti. Got through almost the whole day without a weapon violation (Received a yellow in the final round failing the weight test). I also had another weapon go really intermittent on me in my first DE.

BCAF throws a great tournament. I practice there, so it feels like a home game. I think the organizers there consistently do a great job (kudos to Debbie). The refs were good and the fencers were both skilled and fun to compete with.

It was run as a 10 man pool and finished that in about 1:30 - 2:30 then got right into DE's. We were all done around 5:30 PM. Good fencing all around. Ridge dominated the field from beginning to end. The most exciting bout was probably the semi-final with Hurley and Ridge (10-9 Ridge) in which Hurley returned from 3-touch deficit around 8-5. Both were doing a great job of adapting to each other's styles along the way. It is funny that the conversation in these tournaments so often turns to how to deal with Ridge. I can only say that everything you know about distance is wrong when you fence him. You adapt, or he will hit you.

Diet on game day is pretty much always the same. Lots of protein for breakfast and granola bars until the day is done. Drink as much as possible. Sadly, our traditional post-tournament meal, all-you-can-eat sushi was not to be. I had to call in to a meeting with my peers in Singapore.

Monday is back to the gym.