Saturday, October 18, 2014 – Coach Kael, aka Headmaster Kael of Hillside School (not to be confused with Kale) convinced us all to go to Portland for the OFA fencing tournament. So I did.
I learned a lot not just about fencing, but about proper tournament nutrition, and about the limits of my Tesla’s range. More below the cut.
The Fencing
So I fenced at OFA. My pool was me, Kael, Jeff, Jason, and 2 OFA members. I ended up winning one pool bout. On Thursday during a practice tournament, Jason managed to 5-0 me by raw aggression to break through my defenses. This time, the thrill of competition must have driven up the adrenaline in me or something, because I was moving a lot faster today (although burning through energy so fast, I was gasping for breath between each touch). That and Jason was in the cadet tournament before this, so he must have used up a lot of his energy earlier in the day. The combination of the two means I pulled a 5-3 win over Jason (albeit with some pretty heavy-handed hits).
Overall, I was seeded 9th out of 11. In my first direct elimination bout, I was paired against fellow Hillside Cavalier Nathan, whom I’d never met before (since he rarely stays after class to fence and never attends Saturday close). I knew nothing about about his skill level. In the first half, I lead 8-3, a respectable lead. While Kael was giving him a few tips (as he should), two thoughts came to my mind: One, my strategy in the first half was mostly aggressive. Two, I’m getting tired, so I want to conserve my strength. So I decided to hard switch into an almost exclusively defensive strategy. I scored 6 touches in a row by letting Nathan attack me, then I would take him the beat attack. For the 15th point, I changed things up and let him fall short and then I would get him with the counter attack. I would later confirm with Nathan that Kael’s tips were mostly defensive tips, which were largely ineffective when I hard switched strategies.
My next bought was against the top seed, a fellow fencer that I had fenced many times before, and have been beaten by many times before, Ty Hunter. One remarkable thing about Ty is that when he fences to practice, he’s really fencing to practice, and you can get touches on him while he’s practicing very specific things. And then you face him in a real bout, and he just destroys you. Today’s bout against Ty started badly for me. He got 8 in a row. During half-time break, I decided that anything tricky I can do, Ty can do better, so I decided to just focus on doing simple things and doing them very well. For some reason, Ty had trouble hitting me, and I got a few parry-ripostes, and a few times I approached very patiently and got a few clean hits on his flank. I managed to get 5 touches before Ty beat me 15-5. Which is pretty good against Competition Ty.
I realized I’ve improved a lot in the last year. If I go to E & Under tournaments or Unrated tournaments, I have a reasonable chance of finally earning my E rating. (Which I’d have to renew every year.) But it’s a good goal to shoot for.
The Nutrition
I’ve always had a problem that on long days out and about, whether it’s a fencing tournament, a Magic tournament, or PAX, I get hazy in the brain, headaches, and difficulty concentrating. So I went and got every type of snack I could think of: Nutri-Grain bars, Twinkies, jerky, candy, a banana, a bunch of sandwiches (one of which was a peanut butter, banana, bacon sandwich, and some gatorade.
Apparently, I was too prepared, since all I ate were 2 sandwiches a 2 twinkies, one 32 oz bottle of gatorade, and one 32 oz bottle of water. (Of course, one of those sandwiches and both twinkies were on the drive to and from the tournament.) So I guess next time, that’s all I need. And I guess both sandwiches should be peanut butter, banana, bacon sandwiches. Besides, they have everything: sugar, salt, carbs, protein, fat. And the peanut butter holds everything together.
The Tesla
At full charge, my Tesla has a range of 265 miles. Portland is about 150 miles away, so I have enough charge to get to Portland, but not back. So today, I decided to test out what that means in practice.
In practice, anything that’s about 100 miles out is easy with a Tesla. I can drive out 100 miles and drive back and have plenty of charge to spare. In practice, this takes me as far south as Centralia, which has a conveniently located supercharger.
Centralia is 90 miles north of Portland, and charging up to full charge at Centralia is just not feasible. So what ends up happening is, I charge up just enough in Centralia to make it to Portland, go through Portland, and fill up in Woodburn 30 miles south of Portland. This means that any trip to Portland has to be carefully planned with minimal driving to conserve charge.
I also kept track of how much charge I used between each jump, so in the future, I can say stuff like “it took 110 miles of charge to get to Centralia, so next time we only need 110 miles plus some buffer”. Very useful for planning road trips to Portland. (Which may come in handy when I drive south to catch the eclipse next Thursday.)