Woody Cavenaugh

We teach our fencers to keep a log of who they fenced, what they did right, what they think they did wrong, what worked and what didn't. It allows them to go back to a frozen point in time and analize what was going on in their head right after the bout occured. Yesterday's blog was for me that kind of thing.

Get all the details down and later on analyze it with a clear head. Blades at the Beach was my first time back in the saddle since the 1990's. From my analysis of that event, I can create a baseline that I can compare all future tournaments against.

For instance, I have enough information now to know that I was affected by the heat during pools long before I knew I was having heat issues. I know this because:
1. My math was so completely off when I was tracking progress against goals.
2. In my first direct elimination bout I believed I had already achieved all of my goals for the day.

So baseline is I am very succeptible to heat related illness. I'm overweight and on high blood pressure medicine. Duh. Of course I am succeptible to heat related illness. This shouldn't be a problem as most tournaments are air conditioned and normal cooling strategies work just fine.

The interesting wild card is that last week I was 295, and last night I was 306. I can say with relative certainity that at no point during the weekend did I eat beer battered fried sticks of butter cooked in lard and washed down with a tall glass of gravey. Didn't happen. The popular theory is that this is just water weight gain from all the water I had at the tournament. I seriously doubt that with all the sweating I did, I could possibly retain anything. I will however study this.

I know that normally my blood pressure sits at a comfortable 110/63 with a pulse of 73 on average. Yesterday, it was at 331/82 with a pulse of 60. First I think any strategy I have been contemplating to get off the meds can just be shelved for now. In addition, it demonstraits that my recovery from Saturday is taking longer than expected. The fact that at this moment it is 123/75 with a pulse of 73 I can guess that I am in a recovery phase now, and maybe just maybe I should have taken yesterday off from work to sleep it off.

Most problems in my life that I can solve with fried chicken and cheerwine can just as easily be solved with a good nap. So for my next competition, I will be sure to plan to take the following Monday off for rest and recovery.

My final analysis? Lose weight, fence more, and avoid 90 degree tournament spaces. Easy.