An unpromising start

I really did not fancy getting up this morning. I had been "volunteered" to represent my fencing club in a team competition in Loughborough. I would rather have gone to the lottie to do more edging and catching up. Even though it had been very cold overnight a could still have done a bit.

It was not an early start in Loughborough so I was able to have a good breakfast, the full English topped up with porridge, not on the same plate you understand. Reluctantly I gathered my kit and shoved it in the car then I got on my way. Being Sunday it was a quick run, just twenty minutes so when I got there I was early. One of the other team bods was already there so we watched the tiddlers prodding and poking each other with stocks. It is not really fencing but they got a kick out of it....until they lost. It is good they get upset when they lose. It means the loss has meaning for them and next time they might have greater ambition and be urged on to win.

The school was badly run down and cold. It was a bit of a shambles but eventually the organisers got there act to together. A very unpromising start altogether. The teams kind of organised themselves once the format was known. We started our series of bouts. Three players in a team facing three players from another team in a round robin pool. First team to 45 points wins. As each pool finished we moved on to the next team. We had fives pools in all. That is a lot of fencing.

We ran out in second place and got a silver [coloured] medal for our trouble. The winners were youths from Loughborough Uni. One of them was a Pentathlete so only trained four hours a day, four times a week at fencing. They were the fancied team and we, we found out later, were the team they were worried about. Although we did not win against them we had the highest losing score and ran them hard. Points for and points against count, calculated as an index, so it is important to score lots and concede few points. It seems a simple statement but it is easy to have long, close matches that end we very few points in the difference and pulls down the index. That is how we got the silver. The other teams scored no more than a dozen points against them.

Considering I was not happy about being drafted, I had a good day out and came back with an unexpected prize....oh and sore knee...... and an aching back....... and a stiff thumb.