British open 2009

This weekend me, alex, lee, pete and Sophie travelled up to Birmingham from ebo to compete in the British open. We were part of the BTT/pedro bessa team and have been training from about September. I didn't really feel ready for this competition but as its the biggest competition in the UK i decided to man up so to speak and go for it. At 3.30 my alarm started blaring girls aloud waking me from my 3 hours of sleep, there was just about enough time to scoff some cereal, throw on my juicy tracky and walk round to lee's. The drive up wasn't too bad i managed to nap for about an hour and listen to my jujitsu play list on my ipod which consists of a lot of loud pumped up music and then we were there- half an hour before the place actually opened but better early than late! (Tolly would have been horrified at our tres uncool early arrival time)

I'm starting to recognise most of the girls on the competition scene. My first fight was against Emma leavy she pulled guard and i passed and went to side control don't remember much from it but i won on points. My second fight was against lauren reed who i had fought before at the Bristol open. I really enjoyed this match, i think we are pretty well matched strength wise, she got me with a kul sweep but I won in the end with a rear naked choke. Just saw on efn that they have the results wrong grrrr I'm listed as joint bronze as Raquel what cheek haha. We also discovered some of the medals were spelt wrong (not mine luckily but Alex's was). Sophie did really well beating her first opponent Camilla parker, her next fight against Megan mcgreggor started off really well with soph getting an awesome take down but unfortunately got caught out with a guillotine choke.

The rest of the guys did well with alex winning gold in white belt light weight and pete coming second in white belt heavy category. Lee did well too for his first competition but unfortunatly got arm bared with like 2 seconds to go! Despite not feeling 100% i'm glad I went to this competition, I think that its the best way to test out the moves you remember and see what you need to work on. Theres about a month before the next grab and pull tournament and I'm looking forward to getting back to training properlly. Think me alex tolly and lee are going up to slough to train at btt which will be good.

Saving for thailand is going slooowly temping agency is coming up with minimum wage job after job but fingers crossed!