Holy Shit, Batman.....

....Day one of the tournament. I've learned a lot. And have learned that I've got so much more to learn. But that's a good thing, no?

....so I get down to the tournament, and no one I know is there. I am an army of one at these most often. There are four of us that have competed from my school in the last year. Collin, me, and two other guys that are my belt. So anyway, I have to make new friends. Which is ok.... most of you know that I've never really met a stranger. It's a blessing and a curse.

...anyway, the two events of the night are Continuous Sparring and Ippon Kumite (one-point sparring). And, there were four of us. I had four total fights tonight. For continuous sparring, I didn't really know what I was doing for the first match and got my ass blown away. The second match, I had that "I'm not going to lose THIS time" mentality, so I won. That gave me third place out of four. For one-point sparring, I was paired with the same girl starting out. The goal with one-point sparring is to have all five judges say that you got there first. Easy, right? NOTSOMUCH! The chick and I went for probably 25 goes before she beat me. Then I got a minute to recover before I had to DO IT AGAIN! The second fight is like the consolation round. That was a fight for third/fourth, and I got fourth.

.....tonight's lesson? I have so much more practice to do. I wish that our dojo offered more of a chance to really get good techniques in. Should come with time. What's funny is that people think that because I'm a brown belt that I should have better techniques. And that's embarrassing. But I can't develop good techniques if I don't know how to develop them. Need more instruction.

....Am going to bed now. Am very tired, as I still haven't shaken the bug that my kidlets have given me.....