Last Weekend's Fencing (Part 2)
Nov. 19th, 2015 11:14 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
redfiona99Having not quite recovered from Saturday, but thankfully only having to wake up at past crack of doom, I set out towards the Leon Paul Centre.
As a general note of my mood, my marching song was Turkish Song of The Damned (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=b6fFJX4OkDw) which had got itself stuck in my head and would not leave. Which is not a particularly good sign.
It's actually reasonably straight-forward to get from Hendon Central tube station (when TFL admit it exists) to the Leon Paul Centre. Provided you take the right road from the tube station. Which I didn't the first time.
I got there, just in time.
The set up is really nice, and once I was used to the metal pistes I was definitely in favour. And they had refs. Refs who ignored the shouting of obnoxious parent (different to the previous one. Why are there so many obnoxious fencing parents? The other one at least only browbeat her opponents and the refs, this one was browbeating the girl. I was v. annoyed, because it's not nice and, you know, really wasn't helping her fencing.). I like competitions where there are refs.
I was expecting to lose all the matches, because I was probably the worst fencer there, and slower and older than the others. A few RL peeps didn't get why I was doing it because what's the point if I don't win, but I don't think that they get that I enjoy the fighting. Also, if I don't fence better people I am never going to get better especially due to the lack of female foilists at my club.
But it turns out I am not as bad as expected. I'm not good, but I am not terrible. Two of the pool matches I only lost 5-4 (one of those two was to someone ranked 21st in the country). Got drawn against the 3rd ranked fencer there, a stupendously tall German, and I lost but 15 - 6, so again, I can live with it.
So I've learnt where I need to improve, and got an entirely unexpected confidence boost. It could be worse :)
As a general note of my mood, my marching song was Turkish Song of The Damned (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=b6fFJX4OkDw) which had got itself stuck in my head and would not leave. Which is not a particularly good sign.
It's actually reasonably straight-forward to get from Hendon Central tube station (when TFL admit it exists) to the Leon Paul Centre. Provided you take the right road from the tube station. Which I didn't the first time.
I got there, just in time.
The set up is really nice, and once I was used to the metal pistes I was definitely in favour. And they had refs. Refs who ignored the shouting of obnoxious parent (different to the previous one. Why are there so many obnoxious fencing parents? The other one at least only browbeat her opponents and the refs, this one was browbeating the girl. I was v. annoyed, because it's not nice and, you know, really wasn't helping her fencing.). I like competitions where there are refs.
I was expecting to lose all the matches, because I was probably the worst fencer there, and slower and older than the others. A few RL peeps didn't get why I was doing it because what's the point if I don't win, but I don't think that they get that I enjoy the fighting. Also, if I don't fence better people I am never going to get better especially due to the lack of female foilists at my club.
But it turns out I am not as bad as expected. I'm not good, but I am not terrible. Two of the pool matches I only lost 5-4 (one of those two was to someone ranked 21st in the country). Got drawn against the 3rd ranked fencer there, a stupendously tall German, and I lost but 15 - 6, so again, I can live with it.
So I've learnt where I need to improve, and got an entirely unexpected confidence boost. It could be worse :)
