a day in the life
let me break down a typical tournament day for those of you not in-the-know:
sometime between 7-8am: meet up with other fools like you to carpool to the tourney. Save the earth and all that. Stop at least once to load up on coffee/snackys/bathroom time.
sometime between 9-10:30am: arrive for check-in. Hope you've managed to miss some of the tournament already, but find that they are horribly behind schedule. Find the rest of your team in the stands, crawl over various audience members, maneuver cumbersome karate bags into seats, settle in to uncomfortable position in the hard wooden stands.
around 10:30am-1:30pm: long bouts of boredom peppered with occassional cheering as your black belts (they get to go first) and/or younger teammates compete (kids also go before you). Cheer::boredom time = 1::50 approx. Gossip. Scope the scene to see who else may be in your division. Freak yourself out when you see really big girls walking around with your color belt; pray they are really "kids".
abouts 1:30pm: change into your gi. Check into staging. Replace earlier activities of generally sitting around with generally standing around. Attempt to warm-up and practice a little, but diplomatically decide that you "don't want to run into other people" though the real reason is that the gang of butterflies in your stomach is pretty much holding you hostage to inactivity.
2pm-ish: walk with your division to your ring. Stand around more. Bow in with the judges, then sit until you are called 'on deck.' Get up and move around to shake the last of the butterflies out, walk up to ring. Bow, bow, yell, perform, bow, score, bow, bow, sit. Approximate action time = 2 minutes.
2:30pm: finish with division, receive medal. Skip fighting as you discover no one else was dumb enough to sign up for kumite, argue with head judge that you really don't need to stay if you aren't fighting anyone else. Lose argument, bow in and be awarded with gold medal anyway.
3:00pm: grab your carmates, speed change out of your gi, head home. Catch up on karate gossip, make friends on the highway, stop at least once for lunch/dinner. Get home and crash.