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jan | feb | mar | apr 2001 2000 |
 may highlights: a piano, sisiutl is back...
Thursday, May 30. The end of leaning. As usual, my fencing lesson with Marshal was awesome. He has a way of pulling the best out of you. We did some more compound attacks and foot touches. A couple times a flesch just popped out of nowhere which is good because I need to be more comfortable with them. Best of all, they were quick and clean. The foot touches are still under construction. I think tonight was one of my best rides ever. We were doing figure eights again working on changing leads over the fences. I FINALLY did a good job of sitting back in the saddle (vs. the forward lean) and my how it went much more smoothly than last time. Merlin and I got along much better as well. He stayed much more under control, probably in part due to my cleaning up the forward lean. There were some pretty tight turns and the fences were pretty high, maybe 3'3" or so. It felt pretty darn good. Wednesday, May 29. The swim is still there. Monday, May 27. Fast fencing, wet running. The run was a wet one. Just a steady state around Portage Bay, but in a respectable Seattle sring squal. Felt good though. Thursday, May 24. Its Alive!!! I've pretty much decided that I'm no longer Olympics bound. With quite a few great guys in front of me now (several have come back from retirement) and only two actually getting to go my chances are pretty slim. This doesn't really mean that my training will change much, I'll still keep pushing since you never now what's going to happen in two years, but I also have to be realisitic ana the rowing is really calling me. So, I am still sticking to the one step at a time philosophy. My next goal in the pentathlon stuff is to get in the top 10. Its enough to keep me up and running, hopefully it will keep you coming back too. So, onto the lesson report... Each fencing lesson with Marshall seems to get better and better. Although my point control isnt' great, its better than it ever has been. My balance is slowly improving, but since balance issues are coming up in both fencing and riding, I suspect it will take a while to make it stick...there's just something in me that wants to lean forward. Perhaps its a leftover from rowing. I also learned foot touches for the first time. Pretty cool stuff. The touch was in combination with several other moves so I wouldn't really know how to look for a foot touch opportunity alone yet, but I'm just psyched to finally start learning it. Marshall also worked a lot on my lunge (boy am I going to be sore tomorrow) which is just a mess overall more for balance reasons than anything else. Yep, you guessed it I lean forward too much. After the lesson which left me drenched and breathing heavily I took my first step down the stair to exit and my right leg decided to play noodle and I almost tumbled. Now that's a good lesson! In riding Laura had us working on switching our leads over fences. Pretty nice skill to have when you are on a course and need to switch your lead for a fence in a new direction. I was riding Merlin who can do the switches just fine but he had a lot of energy and kept rushing the fences and had a really strong canter. Finally, Laura had me come down to the trot before each fence then switch lead over the fence and come out in a controlled canter. This worked pretty well and by the end of the night Merlin and I were pulling it off without a hitch. Wednesday, May 8. Weekend Report. Thursday, May 2. Major motivation and a good morning swim. Last night I was invited to attend "Native Nights" at the UW, a networking event for Native Americans at UW and in the community. I went to get some contacts for some projects I'm involved with but it ended up being a major motivational boost. They showed several short films by local Native American filmakers on such topics as domestic violence, child abuse in the Residential Schools days, the American Indian Movement and finally the Wings program to develop Native American runners. All of the films where profound in their own way, but the Wings short especially was poignant to me as it portrayed warrior spirit of the tradition as well as the runners. Obviousely, this appealed to the pentathlete in me since the sport developed from the same desire to challenge the warrior/athlete. Later an Elder defined a warrior simply as "doing the right thing every day" and put forward that each and every Native American deserves this status today for the hardships they've experienced and their ability to carry on given these hardships. "Doing the right thing every day"...that's profound. The elder later sang a traditional song that was purely stunning. When I consider how the sisiutl icon (in essense a NW Coast Native American warrior myth) has been playing a major role in my thinking lately, this experience was even that much more powerful. So maybe that's whey I had some pretty great swim times this morning. No records or anything, I tied my best times, but considering I haven't been swimming consistently I'm more than pleased.
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