#2 Denver Open

#2 Denver Open

At this point, I've made a spreadsheet of all of the US and international IBJJF tournaments. They don't do every city every year, so good record keeping on my part will be important. There are A LOT of tournaments! I shared my quest with some friends, and my bjj teammate, Ileah, decided she wanted to join me on some of these trips. Yay, for travel buddies! An added bonus, my son Ender road tripped to Denver to go to the One Championship fight his teammate was fighting in and was able to meet up with me at the tournament! Ender got to see his teammate, Demetrius Johnson, win another title at One Championship the night before my tournament!

Weighed in 2lbs lighter than in Santa Cruz, I'm getting closer to going down a weight class. Got my gold medal for making weight since there was no one else in my bracket. But was told if I had an open class match which wouldn't be for 4 hours. So I headed to get some lunch and then to the Denver Nature and Science museum to kill some time. Made it back early but it was already time to check in for open class. I had a match! Ender, some of his friends, and Ileah all made it mat side to cheer me on.  

My opponent, Doris, was from Colorado Springs and lighter at 129lbs. I lost to a choke with about 1:45 left on the clock. Nerves were in check, but I was very sloppy with my takedown attempt and never really gained any ground back. I couldn't hear Ender's coaching, but I don't think it made much difference. I think I'm rushing things when i don't have to. I need to work on being more patient. Doris was so gracious and kind. She was surprised to see I came from the Seattle area to compete at elevation. I can't say if the elevation was a factor, I don't have enough experience to know for sure. Thankfully, I have some tape to watch and can hopefully do better next week. Going home with a Gold and Silver. Still a little weird to have hardware for not winning any matches.

Key takeaways after watching tape:

-I need to work on chaining takedown attempts. I just kind of accepted the failed takedown instead of trying to recover.

-It looks like I just never recovered from the failed takedown attempt.  

-My defense was good, I kept her to 3 points until the submission. 

-I'm still carrying some non-functional weight. I know how it feels to do bjj lighter and stronger and I really want to get back to that.

Places I visited:

Denver Botanical Gardens

Denver Nature and Science Museum 

Denver Zoo

Stanley Marketplace in Aurora (this was a great place to chill before catching my flight out)

Restaurants: 

Spice Room - very tasty Indian

Beau Thai - OK thai

Perdida Kitchen - great Mexican

Denver Biscuit Company - great biscuit and they had Impossible meat options! 

Upcoming matches:

May 13 Houston 

May 31 Masters in Long Beach, CA

July 1 Portland, OR

July 15 Austin, TX