Another road trip to Montreal is in the books

And it was amazing!

My Medals are stacked on top of each other.

First, a bit about the tournament in general.

It was well run, all of the staff that I talked to were fluent in English and French, which made it easy for them to communicate with everyone.  The event started on time, normal for IBJJF, but a luxury I'm still getting used to.   The last Montreal Grappling was pretty well on time to, so It's catching on!  One or two of the mat areas had some trouble finding their first couple competitors, but once the ball was rolling it went steady and ran on time all day.  We were even a bit ahead of schedule at one point I believe. 

The venue was one of my favourites: Centre Pierre-Charbonneau. It's like a mini area with the competition floor sunk in so all the seats have a great angle.  It's easy to get to, has free parking, and is generally clean.  It is showing it's age,  a lot of the seats were broken yesterday and replaced by folding chairs strapped to the seat.  Which was fine, they were probably more comfortable anyway.  

Most of the divisions were pretty well attended, the black belts were pretty sparce, with only 5 competing I think.   All masters and seniors to.  Oliver Geddes was there, but I don't think he got an opportunity to fight, which is a shame because he is here in North America doing a tour and training and competing at as many tournaments as he can. Here's his blog and website:  .

A bit about the trip in general

Toronto traffic sucks.   We left around 2pm from Pura BJJ where Alasdair was teaching a day class.  I knew traffic would be a bit rough, but my goodness, that doesn't even begin to describe the situation.  It took nearly 3 hours to get past the entire GTA (like past oshawa). Which should have been about an hour and a half.   My clutch foot was starting to cramp up!  I love driving standard 99% of the time.  Toronto traffic is the other 1%.  We made 1 stop for a stretch/snack/gas/bathroom break and got into Montreal around 9:30 pm.    I had been warned that traffic in Montreal would be bad because of all the construction, but it wasn't bad at all.   I guess because we weren't coming in during rush hour.  

We stayed at the Holiday Inn which was the official tournament hotel.  It's nice enough, but is mandatory valet parking, and it costs $26/day!   which was a bit of a kick in the pants when we were leaving.  Oh well, I've paid more then that in Toronto.  The room was nice and spacious, we had a nice TV and the beds were comfy.   The bathroom was small, and a little run down, but functional.   The view was nice enough, not the side of a building or anything.  Weirdly, around 10:30 or 11pm.  We heard a commotion and sirens outside, and there is about 10 cop cars, and hoards of people crossing the road.  I have no idea if it was a protest, or just all the university students milling about or what, but it went on for a while.  Traffic was backed up both ways as far as I could see!  We didn't bother with the continental breakfast, both of use were well under our weight so we had a proper breakfast and it was really good, for only about 10 or 12 bucks each.  

We left the tournament at around 3:45 or 4:00pm.  It was still going on, but we wanted to hit the road.    A quick stop at tim hortons for a frozen lemonaid (oh man, i think i am addicted, so delish) for me, and an ice capp for Alasdair and we were on the road.  Traffic was GREAT all the way home.   We made another pit stop for gas and coffee just outside of kingston, I wanted to just make 1 stop in kingston, but we weren't going to make it lol.  We stopped in Kingston for Pizza Hut, which might be the new tradition for Montreal tournament road trips.  It's pretty well the 1/2 way mark and the service is good and quick!  We didn't go to crazy, only had a medium stuffed crust meat lovers.  It was amazing.  I've been dieting pretty hard, making my way down to medium heavy, and now trying to make my way down to middle, So pizza was quite the treat and i enjoyed it immensely.  We were out of there in less then 1/2 an hour and back on the road.   Dropped Alasdair off around 10:30 or so and I was home before 11pm!

And now what you've all been dying to hear about...right?  or maybe your just humoring me by reading this haha

It was a great day for me, I had 5 matches, and won 4 of them by arm bar and one on points.  The best part for me was getting to fight new people!  The only person I had fought before was my friend Sherri from the Ottawa area.   Laura came all the way from Nova Scotia to compete!  She is one of the coolest people I have met through Jiu Jitsu and I can't wait to hang out with her at a tournament in the future.  She's got mad arm barring skills and won most of her fights by them!    

In medium heavy there was 3 of us,  so me and Laura fought first,  I won, so then Laura fought Andrea and Laura won. So then me and Laura fought again and I won.  So it ended up with Gold - Me, Silver - Laura and Bronze - Andrea.   


 In the absolute there was 6 girls.   I had a fight in the first round against Sherri,  it was a great match and she was ahead on the board at one point i think!  I ended up getting a sweet oma plata sweep that'd Alasdair showed us in class one day and I had been working on.  so that was pretty sweet.  anyway, I got an arm bar eventually so I moved on to the semi's.   

In the semi's I fought a girl named Terri, who is a middle weight, who had no one to fight in her division :( .   She also had a bye, so she had gotten the mega short end of the stick match wise yesterday.  She pulled guard on me really quick, and I had a hellova time passing it.  Her legs were really strong, and she did a great job breaking down my posture.  Eventually we had a few scrambles and I got passed her guard to side control.    Time was called about 10 seconds later.  It seemed short, but I thought nothing of it.  Turns out, It was only 5 minutes instead of 6!!  So she lost a minute of fighting to.  I personally don't think the last minute would have changed the way the match turned out,  I love side control and once I get there, I don't usually lose, but it's jiu jitsu and anything can happen, so it's to bad we didn't get to play out the full length fight.

On to the final!  Against Laura again!  Laura won her 2 fights in the absolute by arm bar to get to the final.  We did a bunch of stand up, both getting so good attacks in and once I got bored of that I pulled guard,  her balance was to good for my lazy tired judo!    We worked in guard for a bit and a eventually sneaked an arm bar in.  

I really have to thank all the girls who came out to compete!  It was great to meet you all and compete with you.   I'm looking forward to seeing you again!


Alasdair is an animal 

 

He's a kitten... a vicious, no mercy, triangle arm bar machine kitten.  Check out his fan page, it's amazing.  Anyway... He won his division decisively, subbing all his opponents by triangle/armbar or just plain arm bar.  Then went on to get silver in the absolute, subbing the ultra heavy weight Vijay by triangle, winning by bow and arrow, winning on points, and losing a very very close match to Carl in the final.     




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Scheduling Crisis!

This is the first blog post that isn't a report on a tournament! How strange.  I'll be competing this weekend at the IBJJF Montreal Open, So expect a report on that when I get home.  anyway....


As you may or may not know, my 2nd job is working for the Ontario athletic commission as an official at mma events.  This is a great job, I love it.  It doesn't give me that many opportunities to work which is a mixed blessing.   Last weekend at the Score fighting Series  they announced their next ontario event.   Oct 19th.   The weekend of the OJA  Ottawa Open!

NOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO

I've been planning on attending that tournament since It was announced.  They are giving away a bunch of trips and I've heard good reports about the event last year.  Not to mention, it's a tournament, and I am addicted to tournaments.  I know I would have some good competition at this event to, because it's in Ottawa, and there is a lot of super tough girls in the area(Alpha MMA,  BTT, other girls from Montreal and Quebec). 

This wouldn't be so bad if the event was somewhere not ridiculous,  but it's in Sarnia,  about as far away as you can get from ottawa without being in northern ontario!  There really isn't a realistic way for me to do both things and I am super bummed about it.  This will be the first OJA event in 2012 that I will be missing, or I have to miss an opportunity work work for the commission, which isn't a great option because there have only been a few events this year. 

Next scheduling drama.   The NYC Abu Dhabi Pro Trials announced there event date.  Oct 27th.  Last year it was 2 weeks after the Montreal trials which was perfect and my whole life plan/ schedule revolved around that being the same.    Now what do I do?   Make the plans to go to NYC in October and spend a freaking fortune in that expensive city?  or skip it, counting on winning in Montreal in the winter?  If that doesn't work out, there isn't really any trials after it that I could get to.     The other thing they've changed is instead of it being on a Sunday, it's on a Saturday.  Which means I'll have to take Friday off work,  again.   I only have so many vacation days, and they are running out pretty quickly!

I have a couple team mates who want to go to new york too.  We could all share a room, but it's still expensive to get there,  either gas, or bus tickets, or plane tickets. Then there is subway, taxi, food.   It'll probably add up to like $500 / person + tournaments fees and food.    Anyone out there looking to sponsor some BJJ athletes?  Seriously?   We need cold hard cash.  or just the plane tix.  either way.  I'll put your brand all over my blog, I'll share it on facebook and twitter.  I'll mention you and put your logo in the highlight video I'm working on.   I'll be eternally grateful.