Short session today at uni. Highlights - flurry on both sides (quite easily as well, it's not something I've done for ages). I also did alpine blurry whirl. So that was a pretty good session, except that on four different occasions I dropped at the 38th contact (usually going for long tiltless. I have the target of 200 in mind and I hope to break that within the next 1-2 months).
I'll get to my worlds writeup in a moment, but I would like to mention something quite strange. I went back and did my first tour back at the AIS. That went quite well, I gave a footbag demonstration, did have a couple of drops. One on a pincher and one on spinning ducking osis. At the end they wanted to see a bit more, so I had a very good run and wanted to finish it with something significant, so I went for mullet, but that didn't work at all.
Anyway, apparently on two different occasions while I was away people (that weren't related or knew me in anyway) talked about me as a "famous" footbag player. If only they would get in touch for a kick...
Anyway, so I covered the first day, walking for ages, kicking with Jim Penske, and winning at pool by default. This is a quick recap for the TL;DR viewers. Day 2 was circle comp and I upset my seed, which was the lowest in the group, and won my pool. That day was a good kick with Alex Trenner and others.
Tuesday was routines, and that was the day my planning had been around. As mentioned in the previous night, Francisca had been complaining of pain in the tooth the previous evening. I think Nicolas was also having trouble in the night, so there was minimal sleep already.
There was still pain in the morning, so I was looking after Nicolas while Francisca went to the dentist. We went down to the park for a while. The parkland around the area where the venue was, that was pretty great, there were also two parks between our place and the event site, so plenty of variety.
I think there was a bit of rain that morning, which didn't help proceedings. I tried playing the song a few times, just to think about my flow of the routine. Francisca came back later in the morning with one wisdom tooth less, and with quite a lot of pain, so I took Nicolas down to the event site, planning to just get Caroline to look after Nicolas if I got to the point where I had to go on and she hadn't come yet.
I saw some routines, but come to think of it I wasn't paying that much attention, I was getting a bit concerned about my own plan. I think the routine pools were only announced that same day, and mine was definitely not going to be easy. I was one seed outside the cutoff, so I was going to have to work hard.
The pool was Sergio, me, Jakub M, Rory Dawson, Brian Bear, Mathias Blau, Milan
I think I was looking at it with Brian and Rory and they were just like, this is the pool of death. I think I knew I would be seeded outside that cutoff, so I knew I needed a good routine to get through. I also though a good routine and some mistakes from someone else might get me by.
By this stage Milan hadn't shown up, and we had heard some brief word of troubles for him. In the early days of the tournament, there were various murmurings of troubles for all Czech competitors. I told Jim, it's a smokescreen, if they're here, they'll be here to compete. So we hoped for a reprieve that could see Milan not be there, no such luck.
Francisca arrived at around the time I wanted to start warming up. I went out to that main hall so I could be by myself a bit. I got out there and started getting ready and realised I hadn't even put my Lavers on yet. It was definitely raining that morning because I wore the other shoes so the rainwater didn't come through the crack in my soles.
My practice runs were going so bad. The day before Evan showed me his routine in pretty well the same place. He asked for a bit of advice. I felt quite privileged to be asked for that, and I told him that his timing on the shuffle run was not right on the beat. Mads Hole expanded this to say that if that part is perfect, it makes the rest of the routine better. I also told him he would have to hit it dropless to win.
Anyway, the chasm between the quality could be seen the following day in the circle contest, but I was struggling in this warmup, and getting really frustrated. Lots of drops, and lots of simply losing the plot in the choreo. Jakub came by and he was like, "hey you´re using a heavy song, that's awesome." I expected him to also using something heavy, but he had a classical piece you may be familiar with by now.
Anyhow, I try to get into some kind of zone. Francisca had asked about a pharmacy, and Mads Hole was able to point her in the right direction. She hadn't come back by the time our pool was starting, so I was getting a bit concerned that she had got lost or had some problem.
In the end the family barely saw any of my competition, which I was a bit disappointed in. Anyway, it was getting to the end of the previous pool and a couple of people had scratched and they said, "everybody in this pool goes to the next round." It would have been good to be in that pool, but that's exactly the luck of the draw.
I think there were 3 scratchings, bringing the total competitors to 25, so I think there should have been a reshuffle of the pools (5 x 5). Makes it a bit hard at the last moment, but I still needed to do a really great routine. That didn't happen unfortunately.
I'm going to pause my memory and go and watch the routine right now. I have watched it a bunch of times already, but this will give me a fresh view.
You, dear reader, can have a fresh view too.
[youtube]
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=K-PgXgXdu2M[/youtube]
I will first mention the drops (x3)
the first drop was on a torque. What the real problem was that I went to play on quickly and played quite a number of my tricks with my back to the audience, right up the back of the space, which I think is really poor use of the performance area.
the torque was the start of a short segment which finishes with toe taps, which I dropped the first of. At least the torque is a reasonable trick to drop on. I was able to recover quickly, do some more taps and get back in to the motions, right on one of the heaviest part of the song. The plan here was phoenix>ripwalk>stepping ss clipper>op butterfly>rev swirl then another clipper and blurry whirl.
The outcome was a bit different. Something like phoenix>ripwalk>sidewalk>stepping toe and then a ducking clipper in place of the blurry whirl. I was way out of touch with my plan, and also behind on my timing.
The third drop was on a wrap. Get rid of those two drops on such easy tricks, and I think you have quite a different routine. I was off though. My legs were shaking early on, I was quite nervous. And despite all my preparation before going to Europe, I wasn't able to prepare as well as I hoped in the week leading up to Worlds, then I focused more on the other events and just general kicking once I was actually there.
I finished really well I felt, I didn't have a big final trick, I had a series of medium-ish tricks (dimwalk>ripwalk>sidewalk>ripwalk>revup) which I hit right where I wanted to. I caught the bag and almost went to throw it up in the air and celebrate, but I think I knew already that I wasn't going through to the next round, so I caught myself and some people gave me some fives.
The best part was people were into the use of a heavy song. I made my entrance and people liked that. Many people have said they really liked my routine, which makes me happy. Also, up until watching the video multiple times, I thought there were four drops in the routine. So a three drop routine at worlds is pretty good, especially considering there was almost a minute without dropping. Better than I've done before. Still, a lot of mistakes, and the two 5's I had in the plan, were simply absent. Also, there was meant to be a combo of DATW>dbl switch, and that just didn't work out at all either.
Hopefully we'll do a Nationals here this year, and I'll do that routine again, and I'll do it better.
Anyway, I watch the next couple of routines, Jakub was doing really well, it was one or zero drops, I knew he would definitely beat his seeds, so I had to think bad thoughts about the next ones above. I was watching Rory, and I saw his was generally better than mine, though there were more drops, about 5 or 6. I thought that could have been a chance. I'm also wondering where is Francisca, and getting concerned something has happened to her.
So I miss the last few routines. I got out looking for the pharmacy and I can't find the stupid thing. I'm walking on and on, thinking that Francisca must have got really frustrated if she couldn't find it. Eventually I go back to the event site, the stroller and things are back, but she is not. We eventually reunite and she tells me, that Czech guy in your pool was incredible. He of course, went on to win.
I stayed in that night to help with Nicolas and Francisca and her tooth. I sure made up for a couple of nights in the following night. Oh, I forgot to mention Shred 30 was on that day. I was quite disappointed with how I went.
