Bienvenidos!
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Liverpool Ladies - BUSA Trophy finallists!
The eleven hours of travelling notwithstanding, yesterday actually turned out to be an almost enjoyable experience. I met up with Susan at 7am to go down and meet Heather at the coach station for half past, and the coach left as scheduled at eight. Somewhere along the way we were delayed though, and ended up getting into London 40 minutes late. We ran over to the station to get the tube or train to London bridge, but the ticket queue was moving sooo slowly, and when we finally got to the desk it was one of those not-reall-bothered-about-this-job, customers-suck type people who do everything really slowly and are no help at all. She also sent us to the wrong platform, so we had to run all the way round when Susan found where we were supposed to be. Got to King's College 40 minutes after the match was due to start, then had a dash across the campus to the Sports Centre. We were greeted with a round of applause when we finally got to the room. Tanya, Sarah and Bryony were already there, having caught the train an hour after we left Liverpool. We started with sabre, and were heartened when we took the first victory. After this it just kept getting better - we slipped behind at one point, but I subbed myself on for Susan's last match and regained the lead. We went into foil with a seven-point headstart, and managed to maintain the lead the whole way through. I surprised myself with about three very neat parry-ripostes, eventually beating my first opponent 5-4. Foil is usually the weapon we struggle with if the other team is about as strong as ours, but we all did very very well and came away with a further 12 point gap with which to start epee. Again, I was up first, and from being 4-2 down I managed to bring it back, claiming the fifth point with a very nice flick to the forearm. We stayed in the lead until their strongest brought back 13 points, but then our strongest only conceded two to bring us back on top. We knew we had won when we reached 27 points, but still played as well as ever, and finished the epee with a seven point lead, bringing the total for the day to Liverpool 135, King's College 109. After the match ended, Susan, Heather and I had to run off to get back to the coach station, and it's a good job we did, as we got there about 10 minutes before the coach was due to leave. Of course, once we were safely seated, departure was delayed, but we still got back into Liverpool as scheduled. Then it was just a short taxi ride back to Mario's, food, and much-needed sleep.
This morning we both woke up late, but as neither of us had anything to do until the afternoon it wasn't such a bad thing. We made cheesy scrambled eggs on toast for breakfast, finally using up the eggs that had been sitting around since Pancake Day. They were only three days out of date...
This saturday is the Christie Cup against Leeds, which should go ok, then next saturday is the grand final in Sheffield. As well as our final, there will be the Men's Trophy and Shield finals, and both the semi-finals and finals of the Championship knockouts. It should be a really good day of top-quality university fencing, plus the AU are paying for our transport! Then the wednesday after that is the Manchester Christie match, then the 1st and 2nd of April is the Glasgow Open. After that I think I can hang up my breeches for a well-earned rest.
5:34 p.m. - 2006-03-16
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