Hallo! Apologies for the slight delay since my last post. The reason is simple, I've been hard at work, training. My teammate, Alex O'Connell, and I have just spent the last week, living and training in Dormagen, Germany with the German national team.
We arrived on the Sunday, with the words of a couple of my friends still ringing in my ears, 'make sure you beat the Germans' (thanks Jamie and Dave) but did not start training until the Monday. That was fortunate as although Dusseldorf is only 20 minutes from Dormagen by car, we were taking the train. Dormagen is about 45 minutes from Dusseldorf Flughafen by slow train, in theory. However, Deutsche Bahn told us to take the S11 to Koln-Mulheim before changing trains there and getting the slow one from there to Dormagen - in effect going from 12 on a clock to 10 clockwise and at this point in time we had not seen a map. German efficiency = urban legend. Needless to say, three and a half hours later, after delayed trains, and a fine for travelling in the Koln area without a valid ticket (we had the ones required for the Dusseldorf area), Deutsche Bahn were not our favourite firm and we were relieved to finally make it to Dormagen.
Monday morning involved physisch mit Stefan who you can see in this YouTube clip doing some speed work with Jessica Ennis and Jermain Defoe at an Adidas launch. Monday evening involved a team event at the end of the session. England vs Germany. There were only two English men though, so we borrowed one of the Germans, Nicolas Limbach, World Number 1. With the murmurings of Jamie and Dave in my mind, the pressure was on, Alex and I more than held our own and England had won, it was like 1966 all over again, only it was training. A good first day set the tone for the rest of the week.
The week concluded with a competition nearby(c.150km) in Koblenz. We managed to get a lift there with the other fencers in one of the club buses. The competition was a mixed bag for me, I did not fence too badly but neither did I fence too well and the day ended earlier than I would have liked. However the whole experience was an enjoyable one and I feel like I have learned a lot from my time in Germany.
In German, the phrase fertig...los, means 'ready...fence', in other words it is what the referee says to commence the hit. It does have another meaning though, literally, 'ready to go'. I'm ready to go now, and we are off to Bulgaria on the 0600 flight on Friday morning for the first World Cup event of the season. Fingers crossed that all my winter training will aid a positive result and solid start to the season.
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