The not so good competition...

Well, at least I'm back in one piece. Sometimes life throws us things we can't really explain. They just happen. The first leg of our trip was to Dormagen, Germany to train with some of the German National Team. Dormagen is a relatively small city, 15 min outside of Dusseldorf, which was built for the Bayer Aspirin Factory. With a population of about 55,000 most people work for Bayer. Bayer then owns a majority of the town and supports the other smaller businesses...while also sponsoring all the sports teams in the area. The city's Athletic Centre is the best I've ever seen and runs like clockwork. The twice a day training was great and sharing a physical trainer with the German Handball team brought a new direction in how fit fencers should really be....I still have a sore back! We all realized that if you want to excel at a sport full time then the small secluded city is the way to go.....there are no distractions and everyone supports you. Anyways, it was a super experience and with every German fencer standing over 6'2" tall and built like cargo trains it was well worth it.

Second leg was to Tunisia for the third Grand Prix of the season. Last years trip to Tunis wasn't the most organized so we were hoping for a rebirth of the African Zonal competition. The hotel was better than we all expected, from first glance. Yes it was big, yes it looked like a holiday get-away and yes, it had a water slide and two pools...but that was about it. Part of the arrangement was that meals were included. They had a dinner hall that served a buffet, but everyday it was exactly the same and they only served coffee as the beverage?! By day 2 we were already bored of the food but there was no other option (except to stop eating) and that wasn't an option at all!

The first two nights I was there I didn't sleep well....but thought nothing of it. What I didn't know was that the 3rd and 7Th days of any travel are the worst for jet lag. The night before the competition (the 7Th day) was just terrible, on a biological level, and I ended up rolling around my bed until 6am in the morning. It didn't help either that there was a Night Club right next door to my room that only opens for Saturday nights....and it just happened to be Saturday night. I got up an hour later feeling like a wreck with a headache and lazy muscles. I was hoping some food and plenty of water would get me back on target but alas, the 'Man' upstairs had a plan for me that day.....and 'He' wasn't changing it. Fencing is one of those unique sports that takes Mind, Body and Spirit to succeed. With one of those missing you might as well be sitting on the bench. I wasn't alone though, strangely I counted 12 fencers who are ranked in the top 32 in the World who also didn't make it out of the first round....but I can't comment on how they slept the night before. Sure, I can come up with a hand full of excuses of why I had a bad result, or I can just say that it wasn't my day. Everyone has bad days from time to time and there are no excuses and there are no explanations, its just life. But there is no doubt its humbling and without knowing how to lose you can't win. This all sounds like maybe I should write a book on philosophy?! We have a month and a half off now until our next competition so I will use this time to have few days break and think about my goals for the second half of the season and how I'm going to achieve them. Our limitations and success will be based, most often, on our own expectations for ourselves. What the mind dwells upon, the body acts upon......blah, blah, blah....now where is my incense....?