Fencing at Dun Or this weekend was challenging, but overall went really well.
About 20 mins before we got to the site, my body sent up the red flag that I had definitely not gotten enough sleep last night, so I arrived at the site with a slight headache, some nausea, and general crankiness. I'm usually okay when I haven't gotten enough sleep, but I already had some sleep debt from the last couple days and I don't exactly wake up lightening-fast anyway, so if I'm sleep deprived and expecting to have to do anything more complicated than suck down coffee and stare at the computer first thing in the AM, it's bad news bears. In retrospect, I probably could have completed the wakeup process if I'd had Nate drive instead of doing so myself, but that's neither here nor there.
A couple warmups later, I was mostly awake but still had a headache. Some edamame and water fixed it, and I was good to go. Pretty much as soon as the melees started, Laertes positioned himself right next to me and started up what would be an essentially nonstop stream of advice and information. This might drive the average person crazy, but I'm definitely not average--I'm a huge multitasker.
(This is part of why I don't go to movies in the theater very often--the idea of sitting in the dark staring at something and doing nothing else for two hours makes me twitchy just thinking about it. Maybe my little brother's not the only one in my family with ADD. Look, a butterfly! ANYWAY.)
So in the first melee I got killed while paying too much attention to following instructions, but after that I got the swing of things and life improved dramatically. Maybe I was in a "learning" headspace or something, but for some reason it was very easy for me to see the open spots on the field, the areas where the gentle application of a little pressure could seriously mess things up for the other team. Usually my eye is drawn to the groups on the field, the clusters of people in lines or pockets doing something. Usually I try to get around the back and DFB some folks, which has limited success. This time, Laertes had me follow him around while he wreaked some havoc in the backfield, and something clicked in my brain. Then things got seriously fun.
I still died too much. I need to work on my reaction time, and my parry-ripostes. Especially the parry-ripostes. Onward and upward.
More practice tonight--we'll see how much gets done with some of Isles wiped out by post-event fatigue and a traveling head cold. I don't really want to go because my insomnia's still acting up and I just want to curl into a ball and sleep for about 12 hours, but some exercise will probably help me sleep better tonight. Well, some exercise, some booze, some time in the spa, and a melatonin pill. Hellllll yeah, melatonin pill.
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