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You could write pi, π, or write out all the digits of pi (good luck), but if you just write 3.14, all the mathematical elegance is gone

[Lycanthrope]

Sorry to hear about your poor weather, Ken. Playing in the rain is pretty tough. It rains probably 30-35% of the time here in Gdynia, which is much more than I'm used to of course, but there is a market with a nice awning and some flat ground that I use to kick under. You've probably already considered those options though.

In your post USO shred video, I really liked that tomahawk>tomahawk>vertigo run. Hot stuff. Maybe conside tomahawk > vertigo for an opening combo in circles? Your ducking timing tricks seem comfortable.

[C-Fan]

Nice top post pic!

You could write pi, π,

Actually I couldn't:

hoping to either get 3.14 or the pi symbol as my number, but it turns out they can't do either.

I think zero will be pretty cool, though definitely not as unique for a jersey.

In one week I get on the plane to go to Worlds. Yipes. My last two sessions have been longer, and consequently better than my ones for the past week or so. If I can keep up that trend, I can see myself getting to a good mental place before competition. I definitely think mental game is going to be the most important thing at Worlds. Though I do worry a little about jet lag, since that kicked my ass so hard at Worlds in Poland. I arrive on Saturday though, and first two rounds of routines aren't til Tuesday and Wednesday, so hopefully that's enough time for me to adjust.

Right now there are 30 competitors registered for routines. I wonder if they'll do 5 pools of six competitors in the first round, cutting 2 from each pool. Then you could do 4 pools of 5 for semis, with top 2 of each pool making Finals, for an 8 man finals. It'll be interesting to see who makes Finals. I think I can do it if I hit my routine solid, but hitting the routine solid should be my goal no matter what, no matter what round. I feel like I've been dealing with a lot of bad luck lately, so hopefully I can turn that around at Worlds. A good finish at Worlds would mean a lot to me, especially at this stage of my career.

[boats]

far motion > spinning eclipse > same simple swirl was sick in this last video! I hope your worlds training mentally/physically pays off

[C-Fan]

Thanks Boats! I totally stole that combo from Ianek's entry in the Best Foot Forward video competition. It wasn't too bad on strong side, but I can't even imagine how long it would take me to hit that on flipside, like Ianek did.

The weather has improved slightly, or at least my timing with sessions has. Monday it straight rained all day, so I chose to make it a rest day and went to do yoga instead. I was hoping for a more intense yoga session, but at least it stretched my hips out some and was probably good for me mentally. My last two sessions have been good confidence builders. In both cases the rain held off long enough that I could properly warm up, and take my time before going for routines. It definitely makes a big difference. Due to some experiences at past tournaments, in the past few years I've made a point to time my warmup so I don't start playing too far in advance of my routine. The thinking being that I don't want to wear myself out before I compete. While I still shoot for this, I need to be careful that I don't err too much on the other side, and compete without being fully warm. I've gotten better at striking this balance, but my experience with the recent rainouts (where I've rushed to warm up and do a routine as fast as possible) has really hammered that home. I feel like if I'm warm and have some caffeine and competition adrenaline in me, there's no reason I can't do a great routine.

At Worlds my main goal is to do well in routines, and all other events are just extras to me. That said, I've started doing a little Shred30 practice, since I think I can break my old competition records (214) pretty easily, and that could be a fun bonus. Routine-wise I'm feeling strong. I think I've regained the confidence I had before USO, and some components of the routine definitely feel stronger. Yesterday I only did two run throughs, but both were dropless and I hit all my cues. I felt particularly good about that, since the instep of my left G-Unit was loose again, and I was still able to execute everything in the routine. Last night I got out some needle, thread, and glue, and patched up that instep. It's not the most beautiful fix, but it just needs to hold for the next 10 days.

Here's some stuff I hit in the non-routine parts of my training: I had never hit open everything in that order before, so that was neat. The bladerunners were in honor of Derek. I really hope he heals up soon...that sucks so bad getting injured before your first Worlds.

We head out on Friday, and routines start on Tuesday. Hopefully the trip goes smoothly, jet lag isn't bad, and I perform to the level I know I'm capable of. Let's go USA!

[Tjuggles]

Great toe stuff in there!

[C-Fan]

Back from Worlds! It was a good one too, and deserves a writeup...but I also feel I'm still processing it all. In good news though, I'm off to a very good start fighting the jet lag in this direction. We landed Sunday night, and I've slept through the past two nights without waking up. I've also been disciplined, and have avoided alcohol and naps entirely. The lag hits me worst around the afternoon, but I'm confident I'll have it beat this week. Which is doubly good, considering I have work travel in Montana next week, followed by another trip for work to Washington state the next week.

I took yesterday off from work so I could recover a bit. I surprised myself with how productive I was. Errands highlights from yesterday include:

Shaving off the beard and mohawk from worlds
Getting my oil changed
Grocery shopping
Doing trip laundry
Unpacking my bags
Took our lawnmower in for repairs, which I had been putting off for about a month
Returned a bunch of calls

Haley got a bad head cold towards the end of our trip, so I'm trying to pick up more house slack until she gets better. I definitely feel super lucky that I avoided injury and illness through Worlds. I was half considering East Coasts this year, but workwise I don't think it's going to be possible. Functionally that means my competitive season for 2015 is over, which is kind of sad, but also kind of liberating. This may mean I start skateboarding soon... we'll see.

I also kind of want to take a step back and evaluate my footbag goals for the future. I wouldn't be surprised if life or other factors beyond my control start dictating what goals are realistic and which are not. I definitely feel like I want to keep playing as long as I can, though I may start drawing down my competition goals, and how much time/effort I spend on my training. If Worlds is in North America next summer I'll probably try and push hard for one last summer and shoot for Finals again. If it's somewhere else, I may punt the summer and go to Japan or something, and then who knows if the following summer I'm still in competition shape. I think at a minimum, I'd like to keep going to USO and East Coasts for a few more years. If I can help put on a good show, and make the next generation work harder to get into finals spots, I probably should. At the same time, I feel pretty content with how my career has gone. I could retire without regret; I've had a long career, and I've achieved more than I thought I could when I began. With no tournaments on the horizon though, I've got plenty of time to think about it.

[boyle]

Props on the lawnmower repairs, that's one of the hardest on your list. Great to see you after so long. You did really well this year.

Sent from my SM-T350 using Tapatalk

[C-Fan]

Time in the 21st century is a weird, weird thing. 2 weeks ago, I was sitting at this very desk at work, wondering how Worlds would go. 1 week ago, I was in a gym in Denmark sweating over my crappy semis routine performance. Today, I'm back in Denver at my desk digging out from work and figuring out how to blog worlds. Next week I'm in Billings Montana, and the following week I'm in Washington state. Really kind of dizzying.

I haven't played footbag since my final routine at Worlds, Friday night. This isn't by design; its just how life is shaking out. Saturday Haley felt sick, so I chose to do tourism with her over shred and comp. Sunday was a travel day back to the States. Monday was an endless wave of errands, and yesterday I didn't have time due to other obligations. Maybe I can sneak in a shred today? It's supposed to be in the mid-90s though, so maybe I continue to take time off.

I need to figure out my equipment situation too. My g-units started falling apart before Worlds, and I'm lucky my fixes held them together through the week. I have 2 new pairs of g-units I can mod to replace them, though I wonder if maybe I should just play with the current pair until they completely fall apart. I also have another pair of shoes that I bought in 2009, which could be a fun novelty to mod for footbag. If I were able to go to East Coasts this year, I'd consider using them. Beyond the footwear questions, I need to figure out what to do with my footbags. I currently have 2 Ivan bags that are perfectly broken in and in good shape. Those might be worth saving for competitions, in which case I can try and revive other old bags and see how they play, or maybe just buy more Ivan bags. I also have one Ivan bag that's a year old now, and I might just play that one into the ground. Ultimately, I'm just glad my equipment survived Worlds, and I didn't have to worry about any of it failing me during comp. My next tournament may not be until next year's Worlds or USO (assuming I even go to either), so I have time to figure this all out.

Here's a random video I don't think I ever posted in the blog:
I'd like to do a writeup of Worlds this year, but I've decided on a different (better) way to do it. In the past, I'd usually sit down and start writing entries out chronologically. The problem with that system, is that if I ran out of time I'd end up with a writeup that's detail heavy for the first few days, and then stops completely (e.g. my Worlds 13 blog attempt). That's almost worse than not blogging at all, since most of the interesting stuff happens later in the week anyway. So this time around, I'm taking a different approach. I have a draft in my gmail where I've listed all the days of my trip, and I've started filling in details for each day. That way, my worst case scenario is a writeup which lacks a ton of detail, but at least tells an outline of what the week was like. The best case scenario, is I find the time to flesh out each day with a lot of detail, and I can post a detailed writeup in installments in the blog. The key for me is going to be finding the time to flesh out my draft while the memories are fresh. Hopefully I can produce something decent.

[F[uns]tylin' Eclectic]

Glad you had a good time at Worlds. Not much time to read everything, but I watched the last video and it made me want to play. I loved the 7 Fearless with Fury> Atom Drifter to open it. That was severely unexpected. Will read more when I have time.

[C-Fan]

Making decent progress getting my Worlds 2015 writeup ready. I'm going to be on the road for the next 2 weeks, so hopefully I can release a bit each evening, and in the process have a solid write up. I still haven't played since Worlds, largely due to house issues and taking care of Haley as she heals up. Maybe this weekend I can get in a shred.

I was reading over some old entries in the blog, and found this from 5.3 years ago (April 2010):

I'm also hoping to use this time off to re-evaluate where I am in my footbag career, and what my goals are. I'm four months away from my 13th anniversary in the sport, which is just before Worlds. I feel like over the past couple years I've been playing at or near my peak. On one hand I'm happy I'm still achieving milestone goals, but on the other hand I'm aware that my window for reaching some goals is probably closing quickly. If my career were to end right now, I'd say the only goal I haven't achieved is making finals in routines at Worlds.

The other part of my goal that I haven't come to terms with, is that by trying to make routine Finals at Worlds, I feel like I'm acknowledging the right of other people to judge me and my game. My whole career in footbag, I've prided myself on tuning out the opinions of others, and playing for myself. I've always played to have fun and to challenge myself. If people liked what I did, or I won events along the way, then fine. If people didn't like me or my style, so be it. If I had listened to the haters, I would have given up a long time ago.

Based on all this, I suppose I could redefine my goal, to make it more under my control. I could make it something like: "Do a good enough routine in the first round that you earn a good seed in semis, and then do a dropless routine in semis." Difficulty-wise, this would likely end up being on par with my original goal. It would also have the benefit of being completely under my control. All that said, if I were to ask myself truly and honestly what my last remaining goal in footbag is, I wouldn't say "go dropless in semis." I'd say "make finals."

I enjoyed the following quote I read in an NYT column. It was in reference to the Cornell basketball team's unexpected cinderella run in the NCAA tourney, but it could just as easily apply to my aspirations at Worlds:

There is nothing tragic about attempting a great leap and falling short. The tragedy is not even trying.

I actually cut out a lot from the original post, but the overall points are still in there. It's weird, because in some ways I feel the same way today as I did 5 years ago. I don't know how much longer I'm going to play, and that does add an urgency to how I train and compete still. I also still don't feel fully comfortable making goals which aren't fully under my control, and that are subject to other people's opinions and judgments.

At the same time, since I wrote that over 5 years ago, I've been to 4 Worlds and made Routine finals twice. I'm glad I didn't set my goals lower, and that I was lucky enough to achieve the stated goal of routine finals. I also don't feel like I've lost much physically in the past 5 years. If anything, I think I'm a stronger player in a lot of ways. Do I expect that to be the case 5 years from now? No, but maybe I should readjust my expectations about aging. I didn't expect to still be competitive in 2015, but I am. So if I was wrong about that back in 2010, why limit myself with similar limiting expectations going forward?

I also still have a love/hate relationship with routines. Training is frustrating and hard, but it also feels good to be disciplined and working towards a goal. Doing a bad routine after training for months is the worst thing ever, but on the flipside doing a dropless routine where your training paid off...its almost indescribably good. I also feel that I have an obligation to continue competing as long as I can. If I can put on a good show to entertain a crowd, and if I can raise the level of competition to push newer players to train harder to make finals, then I should. Hopefully I can make it to a few more Worlds and USOs in the next couple years, and if I've learned anything from re-reading my 2010 post, its that I shouldn't set a limit on my goals, or an artificial end date on my career. I'll know when its time to walk away, but until then I shouldn't worry about it.

[C-Fan]

I'm in Billings, Montana this week. NBA season is over, I didn't bring my gaming laptop, and I'm injured so I can't footbag. I'm hoping all these factors will enable me to tackle my Worlds 2015 writeup this week, writing and releasing a chapter every night until it's done. I've got enough raw notes down, that my worst case scenario will still give a rough sketch overview of my week in CPH, while my best case scenario will be a highly detailed view of the experience. Either way, it won't just die in the middle like some of my past writeup attempts. Let's dive in!

Worlds 2015 prelude

Regular readers of my blog probably have a decent idea of my mindset going into this tournament, just by reading the past few months of posts. But let's set the stage going back a little further back. I proposed to my wife back in Thanksgiving of 2012, which meant I knew the summer of 2014 would be taken by the wedding and wedding prep. I therefore put a lot of pressure on myself to achieve 2 goals in the summer of 2013: win USO, and make routine finals at Worlds. Happily, I was able to do both, which made me feel less bad about missing both those tournaments in 2014. When 2015 kicked off, we had just bought a house, and we were talking about trying for children in the next couple years. Based on these life changes, I felt like 2015 might be one of my last good shots to achieve results on the level of 2013, so I trained really hard. USO 2015 was fun, but during the 2 minutes that counted most (routine finals), I got flustered and lost track of my choreo. I still managed to salvage a 1 drop routine, but the choreo was poor, and I blew my chance to win a second US championship. I came out of that tournament with the conviction to train harder going into Worlds. My goals for Worlds were:

doing a dropless routine in at least one round
making finals
finishing higher than I did in 2013 (6th place)
medaling in routines

I was also hoping to do tourism since Copenhagen sounded like a cool town, and was looking forward to seeing some old friends too. This would be my first Worlds with Haley, so I went in knowing it'd be a different balance than past Worlds, which was the right mental approach.

The days leading up to Worlds basically consisted of the Denver weather raining at the worst possible times for my training, me scrambling to get to a point at work where I'd be OK leaving for a week, my GUnits falling apart and me fixing them, and some proactive strategies to minimize the jet lag I knew I'd face once we arrived. That mostly entailed going to bed progressively earlier each night for the week before Worlds, as well as drinking tart cherry juice...don't ask, we read it somewhere online. The morning of our flight I got in a solid final session, ate a good meal, and headed to the airport. Since my phone is government property, I left it at home when we left to the airport, which felt liberating. No matter how the tournament went, it was going to be nice to spend a week offline, without checking work emails or getting work calls. Heading to the airport I felt optimistic, though also not entirely sure what to expect.

[C-Fan]

Worlds: Day 1

Every Worlds is different. Most are good, some are great, and a few have actually been pretty bad. But no two are the same. The great ones are never great for the exact same reasons, and even the bad ones are usually bad for unique reasons too. Worlds 2015 was my 12th Worlds. 1999, 2000, 2003, 2004, 2005, 2007, 2008, 2009, 2010, 2012, 2013, and finally 2015. In the past I think I've tried to rank the Worlds, but at this stage in my life/footbag career, I'm realizing it's not clear cut or easy to do so. 2007 Worlds had the best lodging setup (each country/club had their own house with a pool, all in the same walkable neighborhood), and consequently the best community feeling, of any Worlds I've ever been to. I don't think I'll see that again. But 2007 Worlds was also maybe the most crushing Worlds for me personally from a performance perspective. 2003 Worlds was probably the most fun for me from a partying and casual shred perspective, but part of that was I was 23 at the time and I wasn't prioritizing competition results yet. On the tourism scale, each Worlds is on a different spot due to how much time (and money) I had for tourism, as well as how interesting the host city was. And then of course, each Worlds experience is directly affected by you. How well prepared are you in a given year? Are you injured? How high did you set your goals? And related to all these questions, how did you perform?

Going into 2015 Worlds, my competition goals were pretty clear. I felt good about my training, but I was a little worried how jet lag would affect me, since I remember how badly it hit me at 2012 Worlds in Poland, and how I never felt like I adjusted. It sounded like the field of competitors in routines would be harder than in 2015, but I felt good about my chances. From a social standpoint I was a bit worried I wouldn't get to spend as much time with friends as I'd like, and that proved to be the case. When Worlds is in North America, I feel like I have my hands full seeing just my American and Canadian friends. Usually when Worlds are in Europe, there aren't a lot of Americans and I have a good time hanging out with Team Spain or Team Japan. So when I saw that there'd be so many North Americans AND Euros at this tournament, I just knew I'd probably be spread thin. Added to this, I was staying at an Air BNB offsite, and I wouldn't have a phone. I also had to balance the tournament with tourism, and while I don't mind spending 8 hours a day cooped up in a gym with footbaggers, I also didn't want to subject the wife to that either.

Our itinerary was to fly Friday night, arrive in Iceland Saturday morning, then make a connecting flight to CPH Saturday afternoon. With our jet lag plan, the idea was to sleep through the first flight, so we'd already be adjusting to European time when we arrived. It was a good plan, but try as I did I couldn't get more than a few hours sleep on the first flight. I don't even know how much of it I can blame on being excited for Worlds, since I thought I was doing good regulating my emotion. Whatever the case, the last few hours of the flight I threw in the white towel and watched the aurora borealis cabin lights (very cool detail on the Icelandair planes) while listening to the ipod. I spent the last hour or so browsing the inflight movie options, finally settling on rewatching my favorite scenes in Kingsman. The opening scene in particular I rewatched multiple times, as it pumps me up: The airport in Iceland reminds me of a college dorm. I make a point not to sit down, since I'm afraid I'll fall asleep. The stuff we read on jet lag will make me avoid caffeine and booze during the transition days, and I'll also force myself to stay awake and get as much sun as possible. I'll soon learn that sun can be a challenge in CPH. The flight from Iceland to CPH is...oh god I'm falling asleep.

I wake up as we get ready to land in CPH. I need to do better fighting the jet lag than this. I'm startled when we break through a cloud, and BAM! There's CPH right below us. The cloud we flew through was so thick, I just assumed we were way higher up. When we get off the plane, I expect to go through a lengthy customs interview, where I get ready to explain footbag to yet another country's customs agent. Instead, customs in CPH is basically a baggage claim that you waltz through. I was NOT expecting that at all. In the airport we exchange some USD into Kroners. I asked my credit card people if I'd need a pin or a credit card with a chip in Denmark, and they assured me I wouldn't. They were wrong. I brought a decent chunk of cash on the trip for that eventuality, but it was still annoying to me that my bank misinformed me.

We take the metro into town, followed by a bus. The whole time its cloudy and rainy out, and I'm getting more and more nervous I won't see the sun all week, and I won't beat the jet lag. Thankfully this won't be the case. We get to our AirBNB, meet the host, and dump our stuff off. Mission for the day is to walk around outside for at least 5 hours, try and get sun whenever it peeks out, and then crash at the end of the night to try and get back on a normal sleep schedule. Saturday is a weird day for us, since we know our credit cards don't work, but we don't know if Haley's ATM will work. We also left our outlet converters in Denver, so we're not sure if we can easily recharge Haley's phone or not, and thats our only link to the internet. Saturday we mostly walk around our neighborhood in a daze, since we haven't figured out the bus system and are hoarding charge on Haley's phone. The sun peeks out a few times, and at one point I even sit down and take my shirt off, in an attempt to soak up the max of sun I can get at once. Our first meal in town is a kebab, which is pretty underwhelming, but the calories help us stay awake. At one point in our jetlag dazed wanderings, we find ourselves sleepwalking by Norreport station when I hear a voice call out "Ken Somolinos!" I turn and see a group of tipsy Finns, including one guy in a rambo wig and sunglasses. I scan the whole group, and realize that it's Jyri Llama who hollered at me. Apparently, his friend is getting married and this is part of the bachelor party crawl. We talk a little bit, and I casually ask if Aleksi Airinen has been training more net than freestyle. Jyri confirms this, which I file away in my mind for when I see pools in the next couple days.

It's a struggle to stay awake til Saturday night. We cap the evening off by going to the grocery store and buying some supplies, with the idea that we might need to eat on a budget if we have to rely on the cash we brought. I end up eating some tinned herring on rye bread, which is actually really good. I think we play some cards, then crash out at 9 pm. That sounds sad, but actually felt like a victory.

Next: Sunday!

[C-Fan]

Sunday:

Despite being exhausted when we went to bed, the first night of sleep in CPH was rough. Woke up a few times, and each time I tried not to put too much pressure on myself to go back to sleep. Around 7 am we couldn't fight it anymore, and got up. According to Haley's fitbit, we had an insanely restless night, but it was early enough in the trip I was optimistic we'd adjust. In my last entry I forgot to mention that our AirBNB hosts were gone for the week, which was nice since the apartment truly felt like our base, and our jet lagged schedule wasn't messing up with some Danes' lives or anything.

When we left the apartment on Sunday morning we had two big uncertainties hanging over us. We knew our credit cards didn't work, but we weren't sure if we could get cash out of ATMs with Haley's debit card. We also didn't have a charger for her phone, so our wifi access was also uncertain. In the second biggest stroke of luck of the week, we got good news on both fronts within an hour of each other. We hit an ATM and found out her card worked (opening the door to good meals and not placing a cap on our tourism budget), and then when we came home after breakfast we found a USB charger in the host apartment. Double score!

The previous night we bought nutella from the store, since we weren't sure of our funds situation, so we bought a loaf of fresh nutty bread and ate that and nutella for breakfast, along with some local coffee. We walked the neighborhood a while to soak in sun, and then decided to find the event venue so I could check in, get the latest schedule, and get a feel for where I'd be competing. It was nice getting to use Haley's phone to navigate there and not worry about wasting the charge. Our AirBNB is close enough to the site that we walk there, but we come up from the rear entrance and it looks dead. We see motion in one of the windows, and I recognize Asmus even from a distance. "Moose!" He comes to the window and calmly informs us that the main entrance is on the other side of the block. We make the block, and I'm fully expecting to see a small gym entrance on par with the back of building we already saw. Instead, there's an entire plaza with skate ramps, swings, trees and graffitti. It's WAY bigger than I expected. When we go in, I'm blown away by how big and nice the whole site is. Holy shit team Denmark, good jorb!

This drone video gives a good sense of the place: We go in and spend a good chunk of time saying hellos to everybody. This year has the new wrinkle that I get to introduce my wife too, which has the unexpected benefit of me not having to remember everybody's name, since they say it when they introduce themselves. Nice. With the net players I do my usual ritual of asking who their initial matches are against, who they are partnering with, etc. The difference with past years is that this year I watched almost no net at all. I think I only watched 1.5 matches total, which has to be an all-time low. Like I said, all Worlds are different, and its not like I haven't watched my fair share of net over my life. Hell, I still feel like there's a chance I eventually go to the Dark Side. I'm now old enough to compete in the Masters division at Worlds...something to file away if freestyle goes really south for me in the future.

I study the schedule for the week. 2 things jump out at me. First is that Circles are Monday, and routines are Tuesday and Wednesday. The second is that Shred30 is now only one round, and that its Tuesday afternoon. Since my goal for the week is to make routine finals, the most important event on the schedule is routine semis, which means I want to go into that event with as much rest as possible. Routines on back to back days isn't ideal, but I know from my training that won't be a problem. But if I do Circle on Monday, that means I'm doing routine semis after two intense days. Similarly, Shred30 looks like a bad idea to me now, since it'd mean warming up twice on Tuesday, the day before routine semis. I basically decide right then that I'll have to scratch from Circle and Shred30, which kinda sucks, but is the right decision strategically. With Shred30 my best case scenario would be I hit dropless and top out around 268, and win gold if nobody else hits. More realistically, the hope would be for 0-1 drops, a new personal best, and a medal. But neither of those outcomes seem worth risking my semis routine over, especially since I took 4th in Shred30 back in 2005. With Circle my ceiling is scoring an upset in semis, and making it to finals where I probably can't medal. But that's pretty unlikely...a more realistic outcome is I finish second in my pool in semis, and finish tied for 5th. Which I've already done at like 3 Worlds now, so again, no real reason to risk my semis routine. Its weird how all these mental calculations happen in a matter of seconds.

After looking at the schedule and saying some hellos, I go to the gym where freestyle comps will occur. It's a basketball court, pretty spacious, a little natural light, and some bleachers. I'm told the plan is to lay down carpet in the competition area, but even without that the hardwood of the gym is remarkably grippy. I feel good, knowing that I made the right decision to stick with my Yankees g-Units and not try to mod a new pair a week before Worlds. I change into my gear, and get in a session. I figure that exercise will help with my jetlag, plus I'll get a feel for the air/lighting in the space. Little do I realize that this will end up being one of my two "real" shreds of the week, and the only one with no pressure of competition.

I played a good bit with Mathieu Gauthier and Chrissy, and then with Kemmer. I also got to meet and shred with Alex Venis. He has a good body for freestyle, with huge windows. If he can make his motions more efficient and tighter, he could be a beast. I played a bit with Derek, who was clearly injured but putting in a good effort. I made a point to hit some blades and boulders for him. Shredwise I don't remember too much from this session, other than Kemmer throwing a lot of reverse swirl/blink tricks, which are a real nice addition to his game. Inspired by him, I started a run with blink-paradon drill, and he commented something along the lines of: "I never thought I'd inspire somebody to do something with blinks."

More than anything, the session itself calmed me down about the tournament. I felt good physically, I was surrounded by friends, and the venue looked amazing. Worlds was no longer an abstract idea, but rather an event that had started, and where I now knew I could play well.

After shred I grabbed the free sandwich from the cafeteria and caught up with more footbaggers coming in. When Tuukka joined our table, he casually mentioned that he thought routines would be wide open, "given all the problems facing the Czechs." To this point, I hadn't heard of any problems, so I asked him to expound on this. He reveals that Jindra apparently hurt his knee right before the tournament and wouldn't come at all, that Milan was in CPH earlier in the week but had to go back to CZ to take care of his gf who was sick (though Milan planned on coming back later), and that Vasek was dealing with an ankle or knee injury. While I was trying my best before and during the tournament to not think about my competitors, this news did strike me as a bombshell. You never want injuries to play a role in a tournament's outcome, but they always do. Its most glaring when somebody is injured at a tournament, but if somebody is injured at some point in their training, that also has an impact on their performance. And while there have been times I have benefited from other competitors' injuries, there have also been many times when others have benefited from my injuries too. I file away Tuukka's news for processing later, but on some level I don't count any of the three Czechs as out of it until I see it in comp. Even up til Tuesday I expected all 3 to be in comp tearing it up...there's still a part of me that's surprised Jindra never came at the last moment and threw it down.

After finishing our sandwich and greeting more shredders, we left the venue to do some tourism downtown with Evan and his gf Anna. We walked around by the waterfront/harbor area which was nice, and got some coffee. For a country that's supposedly top 4 in the World in coffee consumption (per capita), I wasn't that impressed with the coffee I had all week. Evan and I talked a little about competition, and he asked me if I thought a well executed swirling double blender could beat various tricks in Sick 1. I thought it beat all the tricks on his theoretical list, so it was cool when he ended up winning with it later in the week. We also talked about what we thought our ceilings and floors were in routines. I told him that if I made Finals, I thought my ceiling was #1 and my floor was #8. I think Evan was surprised I put my ceiling so high, but I fully believed it. If I went dropless and everybody else had 1-2 drops/mistakes...why not? Crazier things have happened. Of course, setting my floor as #8 reflected my view that there were a lot of good players at the tournament, and if a couple of them stepped up while I put in a subpar finals, I could easily finish 8th. In retrospect, my views on my ceiling and floor have evolved, but I'll get to that when I'm done with the overall blog.

As we leave the harbor and head back to our neighborhood, we bump into Anton Britting on the street. 2 days in CPH, and already we've randomly bumped into 2 footbaggers. Good hit ratio. We catch up briefly, and agree to meet at the site during comp. On the bus ride back Haley and I realize our stop is earlier than we thought, so we jump off the bus yelling to Evan and Anna that their stop is the next one. We think. Too late now! Haley and I swing by our Air BNB to drop stuff off and so I can shower. We end up walking to an Ethiopian place, where the proprietor upsells us into getting 2 dinner portions instead of sharing 1. We end up taking half of it home (so one portion would have been perfect), where we put the leftovers in the fridge. We throw them out exactly one week later.

We go to bed early again. The combo of more sun, exercise, the increased peace of mind of having access to cash, and the comfort of having shredded at the venue all contribute to a better night's sleep. It's going to be a good week; I can feel it already.

Next: Monday funday.

[C-Fan]

Monday

Wake up feeling like we slept a lot better. Haley's fitbit confirms this. After sleeping on it, I decide to scratch from Circle. The way I see it, my main goal at the tournament is to make routine finals, and even if I did Circle I probably was going to finish one spot out of Finals no matter what. Since routines were back to back on Tuesday and Wednesday, it just made more sense to rest on Monday and not even go to the site. I don't have my Facebook login or Wiktor's phone number, but Haley finds him on her Facebook and I message him that I'm scratching. Even before we leave the house to get breakfast, Wiktor responds with unexpected good news: apparently I had received a bye in the first round of Circle anyway! That puts me in a good mood, as it means I can still do Circle, but I also get my rest day. We also didn't have to waste a trip to the site to find that out.

For breakfast Haley finds us a nice bakery on Yelp, where we have one of the best cinnamon roll/twists of the week. They're called "kanelsnegle" in Danish, but rather than give a legit attempt at pronouncing that, we just pronounce them "cane el snay gulls" the rest of the trip.

We get coffees at some super hipster coffee place, where they serve both hot cocoa and coffee...but the barista claims he can't make me a mocha. Oof. We take a bus downtown, but it ends up taking us an unexpected route, so we hop off at a park near the zoo. The park is huge and beautiful, and keeps me in a calm place mentally. On one edge of the park you can see the Elephant pen of the zoo, but we end up being more entertained/distracted by other things happening in the area. The first is a baby with a pastry in a field, fending off 5 crows who kept trying to flank him. The other was a very fat and friendly tabby cat who appeared to live in a bush in the park, but wasn't shy about coming up to us, flopping on his back, and demanding belly scratches. We dubbed him Søren Kittygaard.

In the afternoon we made our way to Tivoli Gardens, the famous amusement park that all Danes apparently go to during their childhood. The whole time we were there, it was overcast and looked like it was going to pour rain at any moment. This didn't dissuade us from buying entry, and unlimited ride passes. In another stroke of good luck, the rain held off the entire time we were there. The sun never came out, but it also didn't rain on us. From the thrill perspective, the best ride for me was the big drop, where they strap you in, hoist you in the air a few stories, and then drop you. I had done that ride in other countries before and it was fun, but for some reason it was particularly scary and adrenaline inducing at Tivoli. We did a couple rollercoasters which were fun, but not as good as the drop. At one point we did the Ferris wheel, which had numbered cars. I thought I had figured out the order of how the cars got filled, but I was wrong. I predicted to Haley we'd get car #7, but instead we got car...#1. We look at each other like it's a good omen. I'm glad we did the unlimited rides deal, since a lot of the less exciting-looking rides actually ended up being the most fun. On one ride, you rode in a boat while shooting lasers at targets. We soon found we sucked at the shooting part, so we thought the ride was going to be a bust. Then at the end, we were headed straight for a waterfall and panicked, cause we didn't want to get wet. Right as we headed under it though, it stopped and we looked like morons cringing for no reason. We know this, because when we exited the ride we saw a wall of photos, where we were the only people cringing. I'm guessing most Danes were aware of this trick ages ago.



After Tivoli we made our way to the meatpacking district for dinner. We got some mussels which were interesting, but not amazing. Then it started to rain, and we had trouble finding our bus stop. I got pretty cranky, since the first real day of competition was the next day, and I was spending the preceding night walking a ton in the rain. Haley's fitbit would later show we walked 10.5 miles on Monday...not how I wanted to go into comp. I drift to sleep alternating between visualizing my routine, and wondering what the other competitors are doing at that moment.

Next: Tuesday!

[Add Block]

Nice write up. I was reading that last part eating a kanelsnegle

[C-Fan]

Thanks. It's about to get crazy wordy, so buckle up.

Tuesday:

Woke up feeling good, despite all the walking on Monday. We found a breakfast place halfway between our place and the event site, which was so delicious we ended up eating there 3 or 4 times on the trip. Moller's. Kind of an interesting concept, in that you built your breakfast up component by component. Like, you could order a bread, but then spreads were separate, so you'd end up ordering like 5-7 different small items, and that'd form your breakfast. This was our first meal discovering skyr, which is tart danish yogurt with granola. We also tried gooseberry jam, which was definitely a flavor we had never had before. Kind of tart, with almost a vaporub aftertaste. Oddly good as a palate cleanser. The plan was to eat a big brunch to carry me through competition, but to have nuts on hand in case I needed an energy boost before competing.

At the site I checked out the routine pools again. My pool didn't intimidate me much, especially since I knew cuts were super generous (only 2 of the 7 would be cut). The 2 main wild cards to me were Filip Wojcic (didn't know if he was good) and Vasek (didn't know how prepared/injured he was). My main goals was really just to advance and hold or beat my seed, and to gain the confidence of doing my routine under pressure. I don't watch any of the routines that preceed me, but I later realize that 3 of us were wearing our USA jerseys, which is pretty cool. I also didn't watch the pool before me, where Penske and Landes both went dropless, and also both wore their USA jerseys. Cool.

I go up before the crowd, take a deep breath, and signal for my music. Let's go:
Going into Worlds and USO, the two points of my routine where I dropped most frequently were the chest-lap catch sequence, and the fusion. With the chest-lap transition, often the bag would come off my chest too fast, and shoot through my lap. I figured out how to prevent this, which was to pin the bag to my chest using my chin. Unfortunately, I didn't get to practice this with the USA jersey much before I competed, and right when I tried it, the bag shot off my chest way fast. Fuck. Luckily I manage to catch it still, and play through no problem. The next minute or so goes almost exactly as planned, and when I get to the fusion cue I signal to the audience that I'm going to hit something big. The atomic set comes up at a weird angle though, so I bail on fusion and hit legbeater instead. Definitely a bit anticlimactic, but at least I didn't drop. The rest of the routine goes almost as planned, with some slight adjustments to the final shuffle section. Fliers section, transition to ground combo, and....pdx torque to handcatch. Bam!

All summer long I visualized doing it dropless, and even thought about how I'd react. As it turns out, I do something I never visualized: I emphatically throw my bag to the ground in triumph. Feels great. I regain my composure enough to bow to the judges, then give Haley a hug. It's probably the best routine she's seen me do, which makes me proud. It's also only my second dropless at Worlds, and my first since 2009. I sit down and watch Vasek close out our pool with a beautiful dropless routine. That answers the question of how prepared he is for the overall tournament. His routine prevents me from winning my pool, and from moving up seeding wise for semis. I can't be too angry about that though, since I feel happy with my performance. I watch Pool C as I stretch down and let the adrenaline leave the body. Taishi did a beautiful dropless, and Evan had a great routine where the last trick came off his foot. I filmed both routines. As it turned out, those would be the only two clips I would shoot all week. Schedule-wise, Shred30 was set for one hour after Pool D finished. Considering the next day there were routine semis and circle semis, I decided to scratch from Shred30. I had prepared a decent one, and I wanted to do it, but I didn't want to jeopardize routines for Shred30, so we left to go eat. We grabbed the free sandwich from the event site, then headed into town to check out the planetarium.

Planetarium ended up being pretty cool. You had the option of purchasing just an entry, or an entry plus the movie. Really glad we shelled out for the movie, cause the planetarium itself would have just been OK otherwise. The movie was sick though. There was a cool intro movie in 3D which was impressive, followed by an IMAX movie. Watching the universe made me feel very small, and made the whole concept of a footbag world champs seem rather insignificant. And yet at the same time, I also remember thinking how awesome it was I got a chance to be part of the community, be competing, be in Copenhagen. After the planetarium we went to eat. That night ended up being the best dinner of the week, at a place called Madklubben (http://www.madklubben.dk/en/). Haley called it "McLovin's" and that name stuck. The place was pretty fancy, so I wasn't sure if we'd get a seat without a reservation. We ended up getting seated almost immediately, since we were willing to sit at the food prep counter. This worked out great, since we were able to see what all the dishes looked like prepared. We ended up getting a lamb shank, and a white fish called Brill. Both were ridiculously good. At dinner I initially tried to be a good date and not talk footbag, but it was just too hard. In my defense, it WAS Worlds, I did just have a successful day of comp, and I was getting ready mentally for the most crucial day of comp the next day. I tell Haley that I think my best approach for the next day, was to treat it like a normal routine practice. The pressure was on other people to beat my seed, so as long as I went through the motions and finished with zero to one drops, I'd be fine. Great plan, but unfortunately that's not how it worked out.

Next: Wednesday

[C-Fan]

Wednesday:

Woke up feeling good again. I think this marked my 9th or 10 day in a row with no alcohol, a streak that I planned on ending that evening. I half joked that it would either be in celebration of making Finals, or to drown out my disappointment in missing them. We got breakfast in a place that looked like a tavern, but everybody was eating the breakfast platter, so we ordered that. Pretty fantastic. Danish rye bread, some fruit spread, some slices of fruit, some slices of a spicy sausage, a 3 minute egg, and skyr. Different than Moller's, but quite good. We killed some time before going to the event site by going to a book store. While checking out the children's books section, we were very upset to find that many classic children's book characters had different names in Danish. Curious George was "Peter Pedal" and Winnie the Pooh was "Peter Plys." This led to two recurring jokes for the week. One was renaming all children's book characters with fake Danish versions. So like if we saw a picture of Snoopy we'd be like "Peter Hund," or an ad with Optimus Prime we'd say "Peter Prime!", etc. The other joke was saying "Peter Plys!" in a deep voice, a la "bitch please!"

When we get to the site, I check out the pools. I don't care much about Circles, but I make mental note that Penske is top seed, and Jakub M is in my pool too. My goals there will be to make Jim work (i.e. try to upset him), and to avoid being upset by Jakub. I don't think it's likely that I'll pull off an upset, but you never really know, so I don't count it out entirely either.

Routine pools are more interesting to me. The previous day, the #1 and #2 seeds in every pool finished in either first or second place. Taishi beat Evan, and I think Landes swapped seeds with Penske, but in all 4 pools the top two seeds finished in the top two. This had the weird consequence that the semis pool all had the same top two as the day before. That is, I was in a pool with Vasek again, another pool had Evan and Taishi again, another had Penske/Landes, and the last had Matthias/Milan again. Weird. Looking at the pools again, my eyes drifted to the people outside the top 2 in each pool, since the strength of the 3 and 4 seeds really determine the overall pool strength, and potential upsets. Two pools stood out: my pool with Brian Bear, and the final pool with Rene Ruhr. Those stood out as the two biggest potential upsets, and I was a little worried with my pool. Based on the players at the event, I only considered two players to be "unbeatable" for me: Milan and Vasek. The Americans and Taishi are all good, but I had competed well against them in the past. So if I were in a semis pool with any of them plus an upset player, I'd feel like I could advance by either upsetting the other top seed, or just avoiding being upset by the 3 seed. In a semis pool with Vasek or Milan though, I felt like the margin of error was tighter, since it was less likely that I could upset one of the Czechs.

I kill some time before warmup by playing chess with Derek Littlefield. In the first game I make a tactical mistake, and go down a piece early. I make a point not to panic, and catch a lucky break later in the game, coming back to win. We play one more match, and I preserve my winning streak against Derek. At some point in the second game, Asmus comes by and gives me a Faxe Kondi, a traditional Danish soda. I dig it; it reminds me of a limier Sprite. For years Asmus had been saying he "owed" me a juice, which I have no recollection of, but I was happy to accept the drink, especially since it was Danish and something I hadn't tried before.

I warm up in the net gym next to the freestyle gym. Energy wise I feel good. I have enough food in me, I'm in the caffeine sweet spot, and I'm well rested. I timed my warmup early enough that I feel fully warm, but not fatigued. I feel focused on my routine, and am doing a decent job of pushing out thoughts of Brian or Vasek. I feel good, I feel ready. The worst part is the minutes before I compete, when I know Brian is doing his routine, and I can't help but listen to the crowd reaction from my practice spot. I don't hear the crowd roar, so I assume Brian didn't go dropless. I enter into the main competition gym right as they announce I'm on deck. As I go to the routine carpet Haley intercepts me and tells me: "Brian dropped 3 times. Just go through the motions and you make Finals." That was definitely good info to have, and strategically I'm glad Haley told me this. You would have thought that would have relaxed me, since now I knew I could do a 1-2 drop and be fine. And yet somehow, I end up doing a disaster of a semis routine.

As I write this, I had to go back and watch the routine. Funny how recollection is so different from what actually happens. In my mind, the whole thing was a total trainwreck from start to finish. Don't get me wrong; it was a bad 3 drop routine. But rewatching it, the first half of the routine is fine. I get my first drop on a parkwalk right in the middle of the "hard tricks" section, which I compound 5 seconds later by dropping fusion. At this point in the routine I start to panic. I need to be mentally present and close out the rest of the routine without mistakes, but instead the adrenaline is flooding my brain, I'm cursing the fusion, and I'm wondering if I've already made enough mistakes to be upset by Bear. Just as I think I'm getting back in control of the routine, I drop a magellan. That's right, a strongside 3 add pixie trick, which was meant to be a "rest" trick. Now I'm truly scared. I somehow manage to close out, and at the end I make a bow and do my best to get off stage without freaking out. As I walk off stage, I ask Haley and some others: "was that 2 drops?" People shake their heads and say three. Three. Three fucking drops. Fuck.

For the next 20 minutes I feel like Schroedinger's Cat. I exist in a state where I am both dead and alive at the same time. I am both a Worlds Finalist, and a semi-finals choker. Until they open the box with the results, I am in a state of quantum superposition. And it feels awful.

The contrast with my exit the previous day couldn't have been more stark. After my dropless on the first day, I felt like I was being swarmed by well-wishers eager to give me a high five. After my semis debacle, I felt like a leper that nobody wanted to make eye contact with. Haley holds me. I feel like I made her come all the way to Copenhagen to let her down. The only people I remember talking to are Sergio, Bear, and Matthias. Sergio comes over basically to comfort me. I appreciate that he doesn't sugarcoat or lie to me. He acknowledges it was a bad routine, but just wanted to show support. That's awesome. With Bear, I go over to pretty much apologize to him. His routine may not have gone well, but it was my shitty performance that directly resulted in us both spending the next 20 minutes agonizing over who would make Finals. If I had done a better routine, I'm sure Bear would have been upset with himself, but at least he wouldn't have to spend 20 minutes agonizing over how it would turn out. I apologize to us both.

We have to sit through the entire final pool before finding out our fate. I feel like I'm in a daze as I sit there, half watching. My mind is elsewhere, in a dark place, wondering if this is how my footbag career ends. It sounds melodramatic now, but at the time that's where my head was. I decide that even if I do make it to Finals, this is a loss for me. I played worse than I could have, and there wasn't even any pressure on me. After all my training, after going dropless the day before...how the fuck does this happen? I should be experienced enough to prevent this from happening.

Even though my mind is disengaged, a few things occur in the final pool that puncture my shroud of self-pity. Jakub does a surprisingly strong routine, with something like 1 drop? Now I feel like there's upset pressure on Rene, who was supposed to be the potential upsetter in this pool. When Rene finishes, I feel like Jakub beat his seed, and if anything is now putting pressure on Matthias. Matthias' routine goes badly, with some unfortunate drops as well as technical difficulties with his song. Milan closes out the pool with an insane dropless routine. I mentally bump him into "favorite" status for routine finals. I talk with Matthias a bit, feeling a kinship for having just gone through a similarly brutal finals, and being in the same position as him (potentially missing finals because we screwed up in semis). I feel like we're the only two people on earth who can possibly understand what the other is going through..

Results from my pool are finally announced. After the torture of waiting, and beating myself up mentally for the past 20 minutes, I'm just relieved to get results, even if it means I'm eliminated. When they announce the third place in my pool, Brian and I look at each other across the room. His name is announced. Haley hugs me. I feel like crying, I feel like shouting out, I feel like I'm lucky and I don't deserve it. I feel survivor's guilt. I go up to Brian and apologize for the tough break.

It doesn't feel good limping into Finals on a bad performance, but there's no question I'll take it over missing Finals. At this stage I don't even care about the possibility of beating my seed in Finals, shocking the world as I come from behind and snag a medal. I'm just glad I have a chance to redeem myself. I feel like a death row inmate who received a pardon. It's really overwhelming. Luckily I have the rest of the afternoon to recover from the emotional rollercoaster and get my mental balance back.

Wait what? Circles in an hour?

Next: Circles in an hour! (Wednesday part 2)

[krustykrakk]

Hi Ken.

[isirc10]

^ I'd say I was shocked and confused, but I know this guy too well.

Ken, thanks for the fantastic write up, I've been really enjoying it.