Describe your feelings last niught as you engaged in the Juy Ippon for the first time ? How did you find it ?
OK.. I'll try.. but its all a bit hazy and might not correspond to what people actually saw.
Lining up for the first bout (versus the aptly named 'Bruzer') I felt pretty apprehensive. All I could think was "Oh Sh*t". I know Shane is both faster and can cover massive ground on the attack, so I decided to overcome all this by "going at it" a bit. I think I'm prone to doing this; saying "ah to hell with it" and charging in sometimes. I must have been a kamikazi pilot in a previous existance. Not surprisingly, I didn't give a thought to technique or stances, no time.
Once you'd stopped us and told us to calm down a bit, I realized I'd been acting like an @rse. I eased off the throttle a bit, tried to relax and think my way into the fight. I get the feeling I was outmatched anyway, but I was also feeling pretty dazed (and slightly sick in the gut) after the first round, so not surprisingly Shane mopped me up pretty quick after that. LESSON LEARNED: Don't be stupid - fight with the head.
I was surprised you made us shake hands at the end of the bout; I didn't feel any aggression toward Shane at all before, during or after, just a degree of 'focus'. If you ever see a dog go after a rabbit, they get this look in their eye, like theres an inevitability to what they're going to do. I would like to think thats a little bit like how I felt, but I'm probably flattering myself.
The second crack at JK was different. I actually remember it for one thing; what happened, what I was thinking. After your speech, I pretty much put thoughts of winning and losing out of my mind. Like you said, it didn't matter anyway. We could do the same thing tommorrow and the fight would probably go the other way.
I thought: 'I could get him with that distraction thing Mole-Bach showed us the other week.. but not yet.. I'll keep that back.' So the fight progressed with a couple of wazari's each until I saw an opening and did my thing.. Second wazari and a win. Although I got the impression it would have been better if I'd Kiai'd!
Overally I enjoyed it.. it certainly got the juices flowing. I'm very wary of getting too competetive though about stuff like this. I've been there in the past (fencing when I first came to uni).. and its not a good place for me.
One of the most informative things that evening was the minor revelation of how Siwan defends her centreline. It was very effective at completely crippling my counters during nan-demo!
