Thursday, December 19, 2013

RCFC Thursday Night D & Under Epee

http://askfred.net/Results/results.php?tournament_id=24056&highlight_competitor_id=91067&event_id=96496

Well, oddly mixed pool results. I lost to John Comes off the bat, and also lost to Xiao Long Phillips, who it seemed like I should have been able to beat. But I beat Kyle Margolies 5-1 and Luke LaRocque 5-2. People were impressed with my winning against Luke, who went on to win the whole tournament. I had fenced him in a DE once before I kind of knew what to expect. My notes told me to be patient and wait for openings, and to play with distance, which is what I did. Once I was up a couple points it was easy to be patient and wait for him. Since there were only 18 fencers it was only a D1 event, and since the top four fencers already had Ds no one earned any rating tonight.

In the DEs I was slotted with Kyle Margolies, who I seem to have been fencing a lot lately. After fencing a DE with him in the last tournament and in this one's pool I thought I had a decent chance. And I was in the lead most of the time too. But in the end he made some good touches and I made some bad moves and he won 15-12. In particular: two or three too many times I made straight in attacks and ended up over-extended and awkwardly off-balance, forced into a kind of prime, half-turned position. He easily scored in those cases. He also made a nice touch to my hand near the end.

This isn't the first time I've been ahead for most of a DE and lost in the last few points. Perhaps I ought to ramp up the energy toward the end of DEs.

An unpleasant thing: Lately after fencing my elbow has been sore, seemingly more and more each time. It was quite sore after fencing the DE with Kyle tonight. It seems worse when I use the Dragonetti grip, which I did in my first pool bout with John Comes. I switched to a regular Visconti grip after that, but man it is a bit painful now as I type this. Maybe I should take a week or two off fencing and see if it improves.

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