Story of San Diego Grand Nationals Martial Arts Tournament: Grand Champion Winner

Yesterday I went to the San Diego Grand Nationals, a martial arts tournament with wushu, kung fu, karate, kenpo, sparring, and etc.

I usually go to wushu specific tournaments, but I wanted to get in the competition mindframe for US Wushu Team Trials coming up in June.. so….

The night before, I decided I will sleep in (cuz ive been getting no sleep) and whenever I naturally wake up.. if my events havent started Ill drive down to SD and register at the door.

I wake up at 10:30am and call Mason from wushu who is already there competing.. and ask him if my events have started or not.. he said not yet and there were a lot of kid divisions.. so I decided to drive down.

Its 11:15am when I finally get out the door. I take the 5 South which ends up being no bueno. I am moving 0.5 miles every 30 mins and I have 110 miles to go. After 1 hour of being stuck enough was enough. I take the next exit and take local to the 405 south and finally start getting a move on.

I get to the competition at 2:30 I think.. the SECOND I walk in the door Susan from UCLA Wushu shouts.. you’re up next! lol.. so I take my jacket off (my competition silk is underneath) and immediately warm up. I warm up for about 5 minutes and then competed.

Ended up competing both spear and straight sword within about 30 minutes of arriving at the competition. I already missed my long fist event so I didnt compete in that.

So this is was the sequence of competition - I won both weapons events, then I competed against all the wushu weapons winners and I won that, then I competed at night for the grand champion against all the weapons winners including karate, kung fu, non wushu etc.. so I won that, then immediately 5 minutes after you do your form, you compete AGAIN against the all around winner of the hand forms.. and then I won that too! So woohoo! I got my gas money back for driving down. =) All in all, I was happy I won a nice trophy and got a $300.00 cash prize. Boba is on me!