Great practice tonight

Tonight must have been the most satisfying training session I've ever done. I broke my speed card personal best twice, back to back. I had 3 attempts at 52 cards and re-ordered a deck afterwards and produced the following results:

Deck 1 - 0 errors in 3:27
Deck 2 - 0 errors in 3:09 (Personal best)
Deck 3 - 0 errors in 3:04 (Personal best)

I was over the moon with that. 3 perfect decks in 3 good times. I'd be happy with 3 mins in competition any day with no errors. I can start to feel things getting a lot easier now. Things are flowing a lot better and I'm starting to get a very quiet mind when I'm doing it now. I'm not narrating as much, just letting the pairs of images take their place and moving on. I'm making a point of not skipping back and checking that I've memorised something, just keeping going and trusting my brain.

All in all, very happy and getting more and more confident as the days go by. I'm going to try and do 3 decks every night but in reality, I'll probably end up doing it about 3-4 times per week.

Remember the routes!

I've been working on my routes today. I have a lot that I use for practice but I want to get to know lots of them very well. That's what I'm working on. Getting to know all the routes in my head so I can just pick one, and go for it! It will help my practice too as I'm planning to go for 3 packs per day using alternating routes.

Using the roman room system it makes things easier because you only have to think of a room you know to get 10 stages, not 10 stages including the room if that makes sense so it's not been that hard really.

Onwards and upwards..........

All rested, back in the game

After a few days off I've come back fighting fit and more determined than ever. I did some card practice last night which went pretty well. Did a deck in 3:27, 10 seconds over my personal best without much difficulty. After that I went for a crazy 2:20 just to see what I absorbed and what got left behind. I made 25 errors! But hey, I got half right, so I'm doing something right on some of them.

I've got to get working on these speed numbers again. I'm sure I'll make good progress once I defeat my mental barriers and finally believe in my memory after so many years of it failing me.

Not long until Cambridge now. Really looking forward to it and getting some new figures next to my name in the rankings. I hope to be able to double most of my WMC scores, but we shall see.

The break

I've had a few days of memory training as I've felt like my mind was getting a bit too filled up with stuff and my routes getting a bit tired. Feeling good now about getting back in to it. Went through a pack of cards quickly this morning forming images in pairs as normal and did a pretty good job of it. I'm going to go for the legendary 100 digit barrier again over the next week or so. Stay tuned for all my new personal bests! The cards should be under 3 minutes pretty soon too which will be a landmark for me.

Number practice and cards

I've found that from practising the longer digit events my card memorisation has improved too. I did a comfortable pack at lunch today in 3:30 which is only a few seconds over my personal best. I was going for 100%, not speed and was surprised when I saw the time. I think in the next month or so I should get that down to under 3 minutes.

I just can't do it!

The 100 digits in 5 minute barrier is just not going to be beaten tonight. I've run out of steam and need to sleep. I had 2 goes at it, one with 4 errors and the other with 2 errors. It's so close and I'm comfortable with the time. There is just the odd occasion where I go blank and I know I haven't formed my images right. Apart from the errors, on both goes, the recall was simple and fluid up to those points. No checking needed, I was 100% I'd got them right. I just came up on the blanks and had nothing there!

Oh well, I'm sure I'll crack it tomorrow :)

So close!!!!

Last night I went for 100 digits in 5 mins and was very confident that I had made it perfectly. All but 2 of the digits came to me very easily and clearly so I was pleased with that. I was very quick on my association with one character right near the end and it ended up being a complete blank but I know where I went wrong.

I've been practising larger numbers than 100 so when I dropped down to that again it felt like I was going much faster and the images were clearer. It's a good tactic going for more digits in a longer time and then going back to the 5 minute event.

I'm so close to the 3 digit barrier! Give it a couple more days and I'll have it cracked...................then I'll be going for 200!

Finished work early so.......

I thought I'd give the 5 minute numbers another crack to see how I've been getting on. I've been doing as Ed recommended which is to go for twice as many as I think I can do in the event in twice the time. It's supposed to help me when I drop down to lower amounts of numbers and a quicker time................and it does!

I had an attempt at 160 digits in 8 minutes earlier, was a bit crap with 24 errors and the other attempt was 100 digits in 5 mins which ended up with 4 errors. My final effort is below:

90 random digits (no errors)- 5 minutes - NEW PERSONAL BEST!!

So I'm getting there. Up from 66 in the World Championships last year which is a pretty good percentage increase.

For now I'm doing 40 digits, then reviewing them, then the next 40, then review them and so on which seems to work pretty well for the amounts I'm attempting at the moment.

160 digits in 8 mins attempt

First time trying to push myself further by going a longer time and a greater number in order to increase my 5 minute numbers. Went pretty well, considering. First attempt went as follows:

Attempted 128 with 10 errors and one reversal (2016 instead of 1620)
Wasn't very happy with the first attempt but went for another go using another route and did as follows:

Attempted 144 with 4 errors.

Much better and my goal of 160 digits in 8 minutes looks possible by the 15th of this month.

On other memory issues, I'm driving in the morning to Derby to see Ben for the first part of the documentary we're filming. Very excited and should be a great day all round!

Numbers are my enemy

Well, not really, but I'm not getting on with the number 29 at the moment. It seems to want to become Denis Norden when it is clearly a mountain climber! Agggahhhhh! It messed up a personal best tonight so I don't think I'm going to acknowledge the number 29 for a few days.

I did 84 random digits in 5 mins with what I thought were no errors until the evil number 29 reared it's ugly head. It was pretty good all round though, only a couple of moments when I had to stop and think what I'd put in a couple of locations. The recall was pretty easy.

I'm going to soon be working with Ed Cooke to figure out a program to steadily improve my results. It's very exciting, Ed has done some amazing things and to have him coach me is a real honor.

The idea of getting to 100 digits by the weekend seems a long way off now and I fear I may be beaten. This is only a short term problem of course. Next week I'll be on binary and then cards again the week after so in a month or so, I'll have the 100 digit barrier well and truly broken.