Not fencing

This post has nothing to do with fencing but instead relates to the other sport by which I make my living. Bicycles.

We recently had a guy bring a Walmart purchased Schwinn into the shop to get a new seat and some add ons. He decided to have us tune it up too since (as usual) the gears were really not adjusted right coming out of Wally World. When I first looked at it I was shocked. It had actual real components on it. I mean the shifters and the rear derailleur were the same as on an entry level Trek Mountain Bike. This of course worried me a bit because quality is the one thing that keeps us going over the horde of Wal-Mart bicycles. The bike had also been assembled correctly, not the oh so common twisted cables, hubs tightened into bearing crushing rigidity, pedals loose or anything. Even the fork was on right. (You would be surprised how often the guys at the Dept store put those on backwards.)
My fear of a qualitative assault on our sales ebbed as I looked further at the bike those, the wheels are still cheap. The Bottom Bracket was nice 1980 technology without 80's quality, and the front derailleur was a piece of excrementa guaranteed to deprive anyone using it of full enjoyment.
So Schwinn has made some improvements, but I still wouldn't recommend this bike to anyone.

A good practice

That is what I had on Tuesday. A good practice. I fenced well, i moved reasonably well. (not really well, but better) The moves were coming in that day and working. It is taking awhile but I am slowly getting my stuff back together. I am fencing foil pretty much exclusively at practice right now. That doesn't bother me, practicing foil is good for epee, it works all of the basic skills. I am pleased with how things are working now. The only downside is that we don't get that many practices. Lots of holidays now that cause us to miss practice.

But better some practice than no practice.

Tournamnet Report: The Bent Blade

This was a very small tournament. Two events, Div II foil and div II epee. Both of them only had seven entries. I only fenced in the epee. But I did arrive in time to see the end of the foil DE's. I saw wily veteran Earl Shapiro fall to the taller, stronger Frank Trowbridge and, and Warner Robbins two you foilist, Clinton Harrison, (who thinking about it now isn't all that young) and Jared Rimmer fight it out. Clinton started the bout out with a blade that just wasn't right. At the first break he was behind something like 8-4 and I had seen at least 5 hits where his blade and bent up against Jared. but oh well. He finally switched blades and came roaring back to take the lead. But in the end, Jared kept his head and fought off Clinton's return and won the bout to enter the finals against Frank. Which he won and Earned his long due E.

then epee started. There were 2 veteran Cs, one E and 4 Us in the event. I started off real slow. I really felt like I was fencing in slow motion, which considering the 15 pounds I put on over the summer, I am. but I did manage to win most of my bouts. Lost to the E from FSA and one of the beginners. Thankfully by the DE's I had warmed up enough that I was fencing with something of a brain. MY first De was pretty much a walkover. Scored most of my points with the same action and I think I scored all of them hitting the same target area. (right shoulder/upper arm) Second DE I fenced Jared. He was much more energetic than my first opponent had been and made me work a bit more but I won without any problems. the final, as it should have been was the two C's. Me vs Frank. Franks scored a nice toe shot at one point and kept the fight fairly close but I really felt I had the game in hand for the whole bout. I did notice that I am slow reacting the fleche. Which is bad considering Frank doesn't have a real fast fleche so I will need to pick that up before I fence the fast and the young.

Next event will probably be GSU's Halloween open.

And while I may have been fencing with SFC next to my name (which really feels and sounds strange to me still) I was wearing a GASOU T-shirt and warm up jacket.

Practice?

I have been fencing more foil lately than I have in years. Unfortunately, it is fencing, not practice. The new club I have ended up at, doesn't really believe in PRACTICE. They like to fence, a very fun club. They set up the electric strips, and everyone waits in line to fence two bouts then it is back in line to wait till your turn rolls back around again. I have tried, with limited success to get people to drill with me between bouts. Most people prefer to sit and chat with one another. the bad part of this of course is that what I REALLY NEED now in foil is boring repetitive drills, forcing me to concentrate on keeping my hand from turning to far, making my actions smaller, all the basic stuff.
What I have been doing, is footwork and lunges while I am waiting. Which is of course something else I really need. So all is far from lost. :)

I wonder if the others there that I don't know well think I am antisocial for not sitting around and chatting?

Lessons in Savannah

I have been giving some lessons down in Savannah this summer. I went down there the other day and found that only 5 people showed up, They wanted to fence but no one knew how to ref. So they asked me to do it. I decided that if I was going to do that I was going to make it a learning experience for everyone. So I reffed, and took time to explain the calls, critique the fencers, correct their actions, caching things you know. I also took time to teach them how to ref. I felt it was a very productive, if a bit non profitable, day of lessons. When we left, one of the guys there commented to me that he know felt he knew not only how to lunge but when.
I did take the time to actually give one real lesson during the evening too.

Tournament Report

The Pirate Olympics

53 fencers, A2 event.

A very bottom heavy A2 event. Over half of the fencers were Us and many of them were pretty much novices. But it was still a real fun tournament. They also held a team event and a one touch single elimination event. The main event ran very smoothly. The team and one touch had some jitters but that is to be expected. Although three of us went, we did not field a team. Tom hurt his hand during the event and wanted to take his wife out to eat, and we didn't rally someone else. If I had tried I could have gotten onto another team but when they made the final announcement for close of team registration I was reffing a quarter final bout I think.

Over all I did well. I ended up in 16th. Went three and two in a six man pool. which sounds better than it was. I could nitpick myself here because I really didn't fence that well in most of my bouts. but I won't. I'll be happy with what went well.
I fenced a DE bout with Charles Cory who, like most people I have coached, is always difficult for me. Charles had an awesome pool. he went 5 and 1 including taking Bruce Vail to overtime. So he had a much higher seed than I. He jumped out ahead of me at first with his usual long looping lefty counterattacks to my outside arm. I was able to neutralize his counters with a timing change taking advantage of a mistake he was making. that got me back on top before he fixed his mistake. The I spent the rest of the bout literally arguing with myself about trying the move again.
But I did convince myself to obey the rules and not go back to something that had stopped working. Then to finish off the bout I finally clicked on to how to stop the looping outside counters cold. I finally popped the correct parry for a second intention hit. Things went well. I was then eliminated by David Hueske (he got me last year at this event too) Hueske went on the final four and renewed his B.

I heard a fencer commenting that Miles Bengston was the best fencer a the event by far. He said, "no offense to Bruse, Bruce is really good, but Miles has got this" Well, the final score fothe first place bout was Vail 15 Bengston 3. Although Bruce did comment to me afterwords that Miles was "Going to be really scary in a couple of years"

Over all it was a very nice event. Too bad our more novice epeeists didn't make it.

Surprising

Looking at the new features of 14meters.com I discovered that over the last 5 years or so the two people I have fenced against most in competition are Charles Cory and Patricia Wilkins at 9 times. Not quite sure how that worked out. Tripp Hagan, Rob Mahling, Andrew Quattrociocchi, and Demetris McNelly are all tied for second at 8.

This is a really interesting site.

ugh

I have been reminded with the casual cruelty of reality that it is so much easier to stay in shape than it is to get in shape.

Some data

IN 2006 at the Geoff Elder, we had 21 fencers in the open epee and it was a B1 event. there were 6 fencers from the Atlanta area. (7 if you count Ben Mitchel but he was student here at the time I believe)3 from Savannah, 2 from Warner Robbins, 4 from South Carolina, and 6 from GASOU. (counting Ben.)

In the open foil we had 16 fencer and it was a C1. 10 of those were from GASOU. 1 from Florida, 1 from South Carolina, 3 from Atlanta and 1 from Warner Robbins.

Saber actually had 18 fencers and wad a D1. 4 GASOU, 3 South Carolina, 4 Savannah, 4 Atlanta, 1 Augusta, 1 Warner Robbins, and 1 from California.

Now compare to this year,

Open epee, 39 fencers, A1 event. Atlanta 9 fencers, GASOU 6 fencers, North Carolina 1 fencer.(although he may be in school in Atlanta) Savannah 5 fencers, Warner Robbins 4 fencers, South Carolina 7 fencers, Macon 1 fencer, Tennessee 2 fencers, Florida 2 fencers.

Open foil had 20 fencers and was a B1. GASOU 9 fencers, Florida 5 fencers, Warner Robbins/Wesleyan 3 fencers, Atlanta area, 1 fencers, Savannah 1 fencer, Tennessee 1 fencers.

Saber of course was a total bust.

IN 2008 we had 20 in the epee, 15 in the foil and 15 in the saber.

2009 43 in the epee, 47 in the foil, 15 in the saber.

2010 36 in epee, 39 in foil, and 10 in saber.

A couple of good years

1995 and 1996. I really had a good run during those years. It is hard to get real results from that time period because there was no such record keeper as askfred. But I took a look at my trophy shelf. I won the Geoff Elder in 95, I won the Sword in the Stone in 96, if I recall correctly, I won the MUGFEST at UGA. I also took 6th in the Southeast Sectional Championships. (All epee of course) I also won some tournament at Georgia Tech in 96 where I earned my first C. And I can't recall where but I remember I re earned that C the next week. I guess I should hunt through the medals and see if there was anything else Of interest in that time period. Maybe later.

Stats

I have been looking over the Online fencing journal at 14meters.com It shows some interesting stuff.

The win percentages alone are interesting. Since 2005, which is when I first started showing up on askfred, I have a 56.7 win percentage in epee bouts. (truth in advertising here, data for 05 and probably 06 is not complete, Fred was not widely used in this area at that time.) According to the data from Fred, in the 05-06 season I had a 60.9 % win ratio. Nice. In 06-07 it drops to 57.9, 07-08 it goes back up to 62.2, 08-09 it goes up again to 64.8, 09-10 it crashes to 42.7. Thus far in the 10-11 season my percentage is 25. Ugh.

There is a lot more data to mined from this stuff. I encourage you to give it a shot.