2005-01-28 - 2:17 p.m.

I went to practice last night.

I feel good (tarararararara).

It is amazing what you can do when you can actually breathe. Yes, ladies and gentlemen, my asthma decided to give me a break last night and boy was I on!

I haven't felt this good about my game in a very long time.

At any rate, here are some of the things that I have been learning:

I have learned that my footwork is pretty good and that I rely a lot on my body movement to get at my opponent, with little regard to my bladework.

Yup, nothing like moving out of the way and then get just close enough to control their blades and stick them like beef in kebob.

As a consecuence my bladework is not that hot.

And why should it be? Once I get past someone's blade and get on their faces, I don't need no stinkin' bladework. I am holding your blade, I have the proper distance, I can pick the place to put my blade. Bam! You are toast.

Cool, huh?

Not quite.

One of the things that IMHO a figher should have is variety in her game. Oh, I do have variety, but one that involves precision of the blade is not one of them. Particularly with a schlager.

One of my problems is that I am very used to epee. I love epee. It is light, it is fast, and it suits me well. However, all this time I have been trying to move my schlager like an epee and that just does not work due to a little thing called Laws of Physics.

On the bright side, there is a lot of stuff that you can do with a schlager that does not work well with epee and that I really enjoy.

So I will continue working with Marcellus on this particular point. He is a wonderful and patient instructor and I really enjoy learning from him. If I keep doing what I am doing, I will eventually get the blade control I seek.

I have also talked to Hararus (I know I am murdering his name as usual) so he can teach me some of those cool blade drills that he learned in Japan. (We have come to the conclusion that his bladework and my footwork -- his is very linear -- would make one scary fighter!)

Another thing where I think I am making progress is not to let other people's comments get to me. You see, it used to be that whenever I won a bout and the other person dismissed it as a fluke, I tended to believe it.

I believed that if I won a bout, it was likely to have been an "accident." Of course, if I lost another one, it became irrefutable proof that yes, indeed, my other win had been a fluke. That really played havoc with my self-confidence.

So these days, when someone tells me "That was a fluke," I tell them "Yup, my blade has accidentally perforated your skull and now you are dead. Damn. I am sorry."

That pretty much defuses the situation, and usually my opponent acknowledges that it was *not* a fluke, and usually does it with a good dose of humor. And even if he or she does not, by doing this I am telling myself that yes, I did it right and it was no accident.

The way I see it is that if I got you -- or for that matter if you got me -- it is no fluke. Even if you cannot tell for sure how you did it, your body does and it only goes to prove it is doing what it has been trained to do.

So there.

I am not a fluke, I have never been a fluke, and will never be a fluke.

And that, my friend, feels feels pretty damned good.

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