Happy (belated) fencing birthday to me!

Okay, so it was actually last week now I look at my old entries, but I knew it was somewhere around Easter that I started - yes, as of last week I've been fencing for a year!

I'm still attending the beginner's session and plan to do that until they kick me out because I'm still learning all the time. If When I get kicked out, my plan is to join another local club in addition to mine and get my extra stabbing in that way - how my club runs is that the beginners have an hour and then the more experienced folks turn up and, if we want to, we stay and fight as many of them as will agree. If I lose that first hour, I'm just going to have to make up the difference somehow and I'm also gradually accumulating kit so I'm pretty sure that will also give me more options than someone who needs to borrow everything.

I'm now also practising with two weapons regularly - the first hour is always foil, except for the week in February where our coach went 'shall we do epee this week?' and we all shrugged, so we did. Since then, I've been regularly fighting epee bouts in the second session and learning on the job (with advice as we go from other fencers and the coaches). Both foil and epee are about stabbing people, but the target area and the rules are different. The most recent advice I got from the coach was that I was getting too close and getting hit because of that, so I've got to try to hold back and watch a little more, which is completely against my nature!

I've also entered my first non-beginner's (foil) competition but I've got a while to panic about that/get ready for that. Because I've been fighting epee, I'm also thinking about doing an epee competition some time just to see how far I actually am from being competitive - there's one coming up next month I could do, though that's probably a bit soon, otherwise there's a well-attended one in October that would be ideal.

I've also met the first person at my club who completely bugs the crap out of me, which took 10 months so I suppose I should be happy about that. He's so full of himself and if he was as good as he thinks he is, then we'd have an Olympic contender in our midst! Also, I wouldn't be able to take points off him (which I do regularly), and though I haven't beaten him yet I'm pretty sure my time will come... given that I'm twice his age, I don't think I'm doing so badly. He also likes to muscle in on conversations, which is something that really winds me up - I was chatting with one of the coaches about local competitions, getting his advice about which ones to enter and which ones to avoid, and Dumbass decided we really needed his opinion too.

Anyway, minor irritations aside, a year in and I'm still enjoying stabbing people and intend to carry on doing it for as long as physically possible.