Been a while!

Yes, its been a while. After our unfortunate loss to the US last year on the road to making it to the Beijing Olympics it was time for a little break. Actually, a break that was a well deserved time off from fencing to figure out what I would do next. During the Olympic Games, CBC aired live feeds of fencing every night. This was the first time that anyone could see live action from international competition. Pure excitement. It had it all. The drama, cheating, athleticism, upsets, rivalry, brilliance and total majesty...everything a fencing bout strives to achieve. And when a Chinese won in front of his own country, for the first time ever in our event, it was absolutely magnificent. At that moment it was like I was reborn. Its much too hard to put into words but when you know you are meant to do something the feeling is overwhelming. It puts you in a state of mind and gives you a drive to push forward...a drive that can't be broken. Without it I am nothing. So at that point any doubts I had about continuing were no longer afloat. It is my time.

Funnily enough, I wasn't the only one who stood up again from the kneeling of retirement. All the matured fencers that everyone thought would bow out all had a change of heart and appeared at last weeks first Grand Prix of the season in Budapest. Strange as it seemed, yes. But also not. We were all on the same wave-length...the lure is obviously stronger then we think.

The week before there was a Chinese Professional team who were on a "cultural visit" to Canada. We were in Montreal for three days before we left for Hungary training with them which was a great preparation to our first competition.

I love Budapest. I tell everyone its my fourth favourite city behind Paris, New York and Madrid.

This time around we were set up in an apartment rather than hotel. More space, a kitchen (which we only used for breakfast) and right downtown in front of the Parliament buildings. Perfect! We arrived on Wednesday and went straight to training. Three hours of lessons and fencing with the Chinese, Hungarians and Venezuelans after an exhausting flight was a great wake up....and put us to sleep the minute we arrived to the apartments.

I was feeling good. The first day was exciting. Exciting to be back on the big stage and really pumped to see what all the hard work would do. I went 3/3 in my pool round losing 2 of the 3, 4-5. Shturbabin from the Ukraine was the number 1 seed in my pool and I cleaned him up 5-3.

I went straight into the final round of the day having to face Kosa from Hungary. I was amazed. During the past three months I had really focused on building my leg strength. It didn't really show when I was working them, but to great surprise the power and length I was getting that day was beyond anything I've done before. At half I was down 2-8.....and I could see his cocky glances during the break. And why not, he was in front of his fans and friends. Felix Becker, out new National Coach (for the time being) just gave me a few words of advice and a slap on the cheek. I came back and won 15-12. Sadly, my legs had been working so hard that I fell into my chair afterwards with a torn groin muscle. The next day was my round of 64 match which I lost just due to the pure pain in my leg. The German physio girl worked on it for a while and taped it up but the pain was so intense that I couldn't move. Nevertheless, my best result to date, and proof that the harder you work the more you achieve.

Thanks to my 'unknown' magical healing powers I'm back to training this week. Next is Tunisia in March. Look out, that's all I have to say!!