This weekend I traveled to Borås to participate in the Swedish championship of HEMA. The event this year was bigger than ever since we were a part of “SM-veckan”. A week where over fifty sports have their finals in one week. This is like a big kick-ass party for the whole town and I was one of those people representing HEMA, competing for my club. It’s big for the entire HEMA-scene in Sweden. I was nervous as fuck. It all started out with a whole lot of stress of getting there since I found out the day before left off that I didn’t have anyone to travel with. Panic. The stress was absorbing my entire being. Fuck. I decided to take the train and sleep at a friend in Gothenburg. To make it easier, I took all my packing to a friend in town the same night to make it easier for me to take them to the train after work. I got home and was going to book the train ticket. They were all sold out the time I planned to go. This wasn’t a very big issue, but since I was all stressed out already it became a very much larger problem than it actually was. More stress! GAH. Since I was stressed out my mind started to see problems instead of solutions. I hate when this happens! It all sorted out in the end, I booked an earlier train and got my stuff from my friend during the morning. After I had booked the tickets – of course another team member told me I could go with him. Blurgh! This was pretty late in the evening and since I’ve already payed my ticket I decided to stick with my plan. I arrived at Gothenburg around 7 Friday evening. My friend waited for me at the station and we went to her place. We hanged out for a while before it was time to go to sleep. Guess what happens? I woke up in the middle of the night with pain in my throat and a nose that was dripping. Fuck. Not now. Not again. Tried to sleep some more. A cat woke me up at around 04:30 night time. Hell yeah! This didn’t start out well. We got up, got some breakfast and got going to Borås with bus. Got to the place 10 minutes before it all started up. I was stressed out to the maximum. Lack of sleep, lack of.. Everything? The noises around us was overwhelming. There was people everywhere! And the space we had for warmup wasn’t very large at all. Gosh. I barely landed at the site before it all started up. This made me nervous. I didn’t know If I had a coach or someone to warm up together with. Luckily I got hold of another fencer that told me he could do both if necessary which calmed me down a lot (Thanks Jimmy). We looked at the first matches and then I started my warmup. Jesper came after a while and helped me out, he was actually going to fight Jimmy later in the men’s longsword. I asked Jesper if he could coach me, if he had the time. He was uncertain at first but then decided it was possible. Thank god, it’s always better to have a coach that you know and who knows you. I sparred some rounds with Jesper, being aware of the fact that this time I was just getting through 2 matches since the pools were already done in the qualifications earlier this year. My first match was against Jenny Sellén which I know is a hard opponent. It was really hot outside and I was trying to stay as cool as possible – not easy at all in fencing equipment. It was time for the ladies longsword, me and Jesper went to the arena. I didn’t like this at all. All the noise and all the people everywhere. But, I realized the following: I have 10 minutes on the mat. No matter how this end up, it is only 10 minutes of my life. Ok. I took a deep breath and went up there to face Jenny. It felt like mud on my legs and my body, like I’ve forgotten how to fence. Jenny took the lead. I had the feeling that I wasn’t able to take it back. But I tried anyhow and started to relax in what I was doing – now something happened. Suddenly I hit her and got points. I know I hit through her guard twice and hit her in the head that the judges didn’t see. This happens, nothing to be grumpy about – it’s up to me to have clear exchanges and if the judges doesn’t see.. Well, they don’t. The match ended up 9-7 to her, which was good since Jenny was leading with 6-0 the first half of the match. I was disappointed though, I know by heart I can do better than this. I did get one minute rest. Now I had to face Nina Morgan Olsson, who did her second competition ever I think, about the bronze. The first thing Nina managed to do was to give me a nice thrust in the chest, something I didn’t expected at all! I almost lost my mind there, fuck. Am I losing this? Like last year? No. I will not. I did what felt like terrible fencing, but after two rounds against Nina I won with 32-10 I think. Not sure at all but it was something like that, even though I got the bronze it didn’t felt like I’ve earned it. My performance wasn’t good, I can do much better than this and I know that. Nina did a very good job though, since it was her second competition in longsword and managed to become 4 th in Sweden. That is awesome. I really hope that she will enter more competitions later on. Men’s longsword. Jesper. Seriously. Jesper Christansen. Since I started doing competition in HEMA he have been there on almost every single competition (not in Norway this year but that is the only one he missed out from) I’ve been on. He always had very big goals for himself, making him frustrated as hell every time he didn’t get there. This year he have gotten more relaxed in competition moments. And what happened? Well. During the Swedish nationals he won his first match against Jimmy. He went on to Semi- finals and won against Nyzell like he hadn’t been doing anything else in his entire life. He lost against Dennis in the final match, ending up with a silver medal in his hand. This is the second medal Jesper got and in a very short range of time, last one being on Sweden Open where he ended up as third. He has been working his ass off to get here, and finally it pays off. I am very proud to be his team-mate and to have the honor to follow his journey. Well done, friend! Oscar, also from our club, ended up as fifth in the sabre tournament. He wasn’t happy with the result, but he had a very nice development later. I think that the world have to watch out for us from now on.
Team Örebro.
Now to something completely different. People. I very often tend to think that people are morons and stupid hurting both themselves and others. I try to not be one of them, making an effort every single day trying to make the world a better place. This weekend not only one but three was offering me somewhere to sleep. I ended up at Nina’s place afterwards, exhausted from the event also trying to find somewhere to shower. This was fucked up, when I finally found the place they told us they had no shower rooms for us. Bwah! We had to call the janitor who fixed it all up. After that walk who took about 20 minutes with all my packing and that answer I really just wanted to go home. I decided to get the bus back to Gothenburg, tired, hungry and not in the greatest mood. Nina asked me if I wanted to go to Jimmy’s party after and I said yes. Then she offered me to sleep at her place, she even had food for me! OMG yes! I went to her place, got food and ice cream (I think I told her that I loved her in the moment when she offered me to go there). And then we went to Jimmy’s place. I am very grateful for having these people as my friends. I haven’t known any of them for so long, but they mean a lot for me. Just having someone’s keys in case of something messing up along the way means a lot to me. I could also had slept at Jimmy’s place. I had tons of alternatives! Normally this kind of situation should have stressed me out totally, instead I got home with the nicest feeling inside of me. I love you friends! Now, I’ve learned a lot during this weekend – both in HEMA and in life. I will continue to develop as a human being and as a fencer. I have plans for them both. Just you wait. ;)
