Updating...
I've spent some time now reading up on my previous posts, to see what I should write about to get the few readers out there back on track with what's been happening. I soon realised that there is quite a lot, but I'll try to keep it reasonably short.
From the beginner's course in iaido last spring, that I was writing about about a year ago, only two people are still practising. Most girls dropped out, which was of course a sad thing. At the moment there are still only 3-4 girls practising in the club, including me. In total I'd guess we're around 10-15 people practising iai, and with almost no interest from potential beginners this semester, it doesn't seem that we're going grow until the autumn, at least. There are enough of us to keep things running without getting too lonely though (if you read some of my earliest posts here, you'll see that not too rarely I was practising all alone).
I decided during 2006 to aspire for the national team again, which was a great thing because I got to go to a lot of great seminars and learned loads. I practised very intensely the entire first semester of the year and at the Swedish Championships in May I received one of the bronze medals in the shodan class and, even better, got one of the judges' vote against someone graded higher than me in the team competition! During the summer I was told that I'd been chosen for the national team and in September I got to go to the European Championships in Brighton and compete. I soon fell out of the competition in the shodan group, but I graded nidan (didn't think I'd pass, but I did!) and had a lot of fun. English food is really crap, though. ;)
I also managed to keep my kendo attendance at a high enough level to manage to grade for 3kyu at the beginning of summer. Not a great accomplishment, but it felt good.
Then came the autumn... And, well. Things didn't go as well. Basically, I had a more or less perpetual cold during these months and nothing to motivate me. In essence, I practised way too little, but didn't really know what else to do.
Right now I'm trying to raise my motivation for iai, as I've already seen how much I can benefit from that. Using FunBeat, I've set a goal to practise for at least 3 full hours a week, which isn't really a lot, but I think that as a minimum it is enough to get me going again. I haven't decided yet if I'm going to aspire for the national team again. I would really like to, but am not sure if I will have the time and money to really go for it.
On the kendo side of life I'm trying to shape up. Last March I started a "101 things in 1001 days" project, which is basically a list of 101 things that I want to accomplish before december 2008. One of the tasks is to grade shodan in kendo. This has motivated me to get off my lazy butt and go to practice, and made me notice that:
1) It was more fun than I remembered!
2) Even though my stamina is out the window I can do a lot more than I thought. Yay!
So the short term goal right now is to get ready for 2kyu at the end of this semester. And have fun getting there.
Needless to say, maybe, my body seems to have entered some sort of shock state due to the sudden increase in practice time, but I think it's coming out of it again, though slowly. I'll rather deal with a few aches here and there than repeat what happened in the autumn though.
And so...I managed to write an all-too-long blog post anyway. But at least now you know what's happened. :)
From the beginner's course in iaido last spring, that I was writing about about a year ago, only two people are still practising. Most girls dropped out, which was of course a sad thing. At the moment there are still only 3-4 girls practising in the club, including me. In total I'd guess we're around 10-15 people practising iai, and with almost no interest from potential beginners this semester, it doesn't seem that we're going grow until the autumn, at least. There are enough of us to keep things running without getting too lonely though (if you read some of my earliest posts here, you'll see that not too rarely I was practising all alone).
I decided during 2006 to aspire for the national team again, which was a great thing because I got to go to a lot of great seminars and learned loads. I practised very intensely the entire first semester of the year and at the Swedish Championships in May I received one of the bronze medals in the shodan class and, even better, got one of the judges' vote against someone graded higher than me in the team competition! During the summer I was told that I'd been chosen for the national team and in September I got to go to the European Championships in Brighton and compete. I soon fell out of the competition in the shodan group, but I graded nidan (didn't think I'd pass, but I did!) and had a lot of fun. English food is really crap, though. ;)
I also managed to keep my kendo attendance at a high enough level to manage to grade for 3kyu at the beginning of summer. Not a great accomplishment, but it felt good.
Then came the autumn... And, well. Things didn't go as well. Basically, I had a more or less perpetual cold during these months and nothing to motivate me. In essence, I practised way too little, but didn't really know what else to do.
Right now I'm trying to raise my motivation for iai, as I've already seen how much I can benefit from that. Using FunBeat, I've set a goal to practise for at least 3 full hours a week, which isn't really a lot, but I think that as a minimum it is enough to get me going again. I haven't decided yet if I'm going to aspire for the national team again. I would really like to, but am not sure if I will have the time and money to really go for it.
On the kendo side of life I'm trying to shape up. Last March I started a "101 things in 1001 days" project, which is basically a list of 101 things that I want to accomplish before december 2008. One of the tasks is to grade shodan in kendo. This has motivated me to get off my lazy butt and go to practice, and made me notice that:
1) It was more fun than I remembered!
2) Even though my stamina is out the window I can do a lot more than I thought. Yay!
So the short term goal right now is to get ready for 2kyu at the end of this semester. And have fun getting there.
Needless to say, maybe, my body seems to have entered some sort of shock state due to the sudden increase in practice time, but I think it's coming out of it again, though slowly. I'll rather deal with a few aches here and there than repeat what happened in the autumn though.
And so...I managed to write an all-too-long blog post anyway. But at least now you know what's happened. :)
Labels: 2006, brighton, european championships, illness, national team, swedish championships
posted by Caroline at 12:43
3 Comments:
Congratulations on your reentry to blogging and training.Also well done on your Nidan examintion. I'm looking forward to reading more...
Thank you. I'm glad to have a faithful reader. ;)
Congrats on your nidan and it's very interesting to read about other people's iaido experiences. ;) Please keep going.
Post a Comment
<< Home