Sunday 3rd September 2017

After a few days of mystery stress, I felt something approaching normal today.  I do feel like I’ve got a bit of a chill, so perhaps I have a touch of something.  It’s also possible that this is a result rather than a cause.
Either way, whilst I’ve felt touches of stress (in the form of a bit of needless anxiety), I’ve been able to bring it under control and, as a result, had quite a good day.
I was sparring this morning.  It’s a 2 hour drive but when you consider that these sessions usually contain some of the best fighters in the world, it’s worth the drive.  We were starting late today, which was a bit annoying as there was a half-marathon going on and I needed to leave at my normal time in order to miss the closed roads.
I stopped at the supermarket to pick up a few bits and then went on to sparring.  We had a really good turn out today although I didn’t get as many fights as I would have liked.
I think I fenced well today.  Going up against the World #1, I wasn’t giving him time to setup his thrusts, but it meant a LOT of moving around.  It worked and I fought really well (so well, I was able to give him some useful feedback and he then wanted to fence me again).  I felt pretty solid and it feels like my fencing has taken another step up.
This was quite surprising as whilst I wasn’t unfocused, I wasn’t as laser-focused as I usually am.  But feeling a lot less stressed meant I could find a bit of my old mojo.  I have got a tournament in 2 weeks and I’m starting to feel the beginnings of getting competitive again.
As I was saying today, I’ve been so focused on Astolat and Fightcamp and girding myself for anticipated disappointment that when I did well, it was a bit of a surprise.  But after Fightcamp I did feel a bit burnt out (leading to me taking a week off the other week).  And whilst my urge to win isn’t back to its normal high, I’m starting to feel a bit more competitive.
What’s not helping me is general cardio.  I need to drop some weight and it caused me, especially having a very mobile fight with Pim, to get out of breath very quickly.
I’ve probably put on about a stone since before Storm Chasing, but whilst I seem to drop I seem to put it back on.  What’s probably caused me to not worry too much is the fact that it has seemed to go back on evenly.  I’m still exercising a lot and so whilst I have body fat, it’s not pooling in my chest and stomach on top of what’s already there.  Instead it seems to be distributing itself evenly.
But, as I’ve been saying for a few weeks now, I need to drop some weight ahead of tournaments, if only so I can get into my fencing britches for Swordfish in Sweden.
I’m eating properly, I just have a tiny bit of crap on top (such as the occasional chocolate bar), but if I want abs (and let’s face it with how hard I train, I can do it, even at my age) then I need to be super strict.
I left sparring absolutely drpping with sweat and then headed home to a very welcome shower.
I then spent the rest of the day playing World of Warcraft, specifically working on the new mount quest.  Luckily, in farming for the tailoring pattern and making myself the mask, I’d completed one of the hardest stages… or so I thought.
The final challenge was particularly fiendish.  You go into a labyrinth.  Each room is identical with four exits, some of which can be blocked by rubble.  There are 5 different runes and five different coloured torches in the labyrinth.  All you need to do is to take the torches to the matching rune.
Sound simple, right?  I think it took me about 5 or 6 hours.  First, the labyrinth is large.  We’re not talking two or three rooms, we’re talking about hundreds.  The rooms also connect up.  Now I was smart and followed advice and mapped the rooms out in Excel, using the worksheet as a grid to mark the rooms and the various exits on.
That sounds simple, but there are various areas where a path will double back and not so much meet up with itself as write over the top of itself.  I quickly learnt that this was not a map that fitted neatly into a grid.  You head off to the right, you’ll come round to the left.  But because everything looks the same, it’s hard to tell.  As you match runes and torches, they disappear, so you quickly lose visual markers that you’ve been in this room before.
And then, as I went to save, Excel crashed.  It said it had saved to the cloud but I then couldn’t retrieve it.  Of course, I didn’t want to reboot as I’d found four of the five torches and matched them to the corresponding runes, and I feared if I logged off, it would reset.
So I lost my map, and there was a lot of swearing about Onedrive and its cloud storage.
However, just when I thought I would have to start my map from scratch, I found the elusive blue torch and was able to complete the stage.
Wow, never want to do that again.
The new mount is pretty cool and did enjoy the various puzzles.
So all in all, not a bad day, especially when you compare to how shitty yesterday was.  I just hope I’m not coming down with a chill in the meantime.
If you want to follow more of my journey, then be sure to check me on my social channels.  Likewise, if you’d like me to expand on any point mentioned above, please say so in the comments.

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