This man is ready to rumble.Me? I'm working on it. Tomorrow morning is the Gracie Barra Invitational. Teammates from schools in Lake Stevens, Ballard, and Bellevue will be in attendance, as will some people from Foster BJJ in all likelihood. If I wasn't competing, I'd probably be looking forward to an exciting day of competition on the mat.
As it is, I'll be sweating it out on the sidelines waiting for my turn sometime after the white and blue belts finish up, I suspect.
I'd started to lose the "fire" (to use Clint's phrase) for this weekend's event a few days ago, as a cold and a completely unexpected calamity struck. There were probably a few other factors - some perennial - contributing the cold feet. But the fact of the matter is that come 8:30 a.m. tomorrow morning, I'll be getting my motor and my MP3 player running for the ride to Gracie Barra Bellevue.
I had a pretty good conversation with Rodrigo Thursday night after training. It wasn't much, but it probably had a lot to do with me deciding to go ahead and compete anyway. As much as I enjoy tournaments - and coaching competitors - I compete partly because I think I should as part of my experiencing jiu jitsu in its fullest, and partly because if I do well it reflects well on the school.
And that's really it. Sure, it feels nice to win. But honestly most of what I feel is a sense of relief once the match is over. I would much, much rather spend my time rolling for 10 or 20 minutes, constantly trying different things, maybe just rolling for the first submission whenever it arrives, than to feel parachuted into the six-minute panic room of contemporary sport jiu jitsu.
So it will be interesting tomorrow. It really felt as if the wheels fell of mid-week in terms of both my off mat conditioning and on mat training. Nevertheless Saturday will give me a chance to see where I stand - arguably, and at least in Rodrigo's opinion, against some of the best purple belt lightweights around. And in a more confident mode, I would be a bit better equipped to be appropriately grateful for that.
