Intital practice with mental review

I had a go at a quick 80 digits this morning followed by a 40 digit burst to test how long it takes for me to do the mental review and not re-read any of the numbers I was memorising. I can safely say It is a much better way for me to be working. My error rate was perfect and my speed (had I carried on at that pace) would have allowed me to get a fairly comfortable 166 digits in 5 minutes.

I could recall the number (all 120 digits) after 1 mental review 15 minutes later which gave me great confidence too for the longer events. I need to get a new review plan together now to accommodate the new system as I think I will need a lot less time than I used to.

Learn and remember

I'm working my way through Charles Garavan's book - Learn and Remember for Leaving Certificate which he generously gave to me in return for some feedback on the contents. I'm only 2 chapters in and I'm already thinking about how it can help me with not just regular day to day learning but also my training for competition.

There is a very interesting section on reading information and remembering it. The short version is that if you read information it is not as good as remembering it from your brain i.e. don't keep re-reading information, test yourself on it from your memory. The theory goes that your brain will remember this much clearer and make it more relevant and consequently you will have greater recall.

I'm going to play around with this on the different events we do in competition. I'll try reading through the first 40 digits as normal and instead of going back over the numbers, just close my eyes and see all the images in their location again before moving on to line 2 and repeating. I'm excited to see how this will impact my results.

More soon memory fans

Just how much did Cambridge take out of me?!

After my post this morning I had to go back to sleep and didn't get up until 3pm. It's not like I got back late either, I was asleep last night by 11!

I only hope that this is pushing my brain to new heights and not destroying it :)

Great work by Simon Orton getting the results up so quickly. I've only moved up 2 places though! If I'd scored 80 on the 5 minute digits I would have jumped quite a bit. It seems there isn't much between in terms of points between positions 140 and 100. I'll get there next time.

The morning after Cambridge 2007

I'm so tired. On the drive home last night I could have just stopped in the car and slept all night at the side of the road. It was even more tiring that WMC for some reason. We did have time issues so we were back to back on some events which didn't give much time to relax.

It was a great day all in all though. It was filled with some moments of great happiness and deep disappointment for me. I performed very well on some events and very poorly on the ones I'd practiced most which was a bit strange. That's the way it goes sometimes though but at least I now have something to build on and some great ideas to change my training at home.

I also realised that I've been pushing myself too hard. I'm expecting to get excellent scores in a comparatively short amount of time which generally doesn't happen. I'm looking to put steady progress markers in place so I don't jump from 100 digits to 400 overnight and get very annoyed making mistakes along the way.

I can't remember any of my scores but they will be posted soon somewhere so I'll have to scrutinise in more detail in the next few days. I said I'd take a few days off but what did I do first thing this morning? Started reviewing some parts of books I've got on memory and planning to do a few decks of cards this afternoon. When will I ever learn to give my brain a break!

Thanks to everyone who was at the event. The helpers were excellent and got the marking done in record time which is always great for the competitors. Big thanks to everyone who competed. Everyone is so supportive and helps everyone out so lets get training for the next one guys!!

The day before Cambridge 2007

I've been going through the routes I'm going to use for the different events tomorrow. All of my goals are in place and I know what I'm going for so I shouldn't be too nervous on the day. I think I'm more excited than anything. Hopefully it won't affect my sleep too much like it did at WMC last year. I had to struggle through day 1 with only a few hours sleep which was horrible.

I still think there should be lots more competitions. I'd love to do one every couple of months really so I can get used to the format and competing with others under pressure. I think because there are only a couple of competitions per year the pressure is so much more because you have to wait ages until you get another go to make up for any mistakes.

Hopefully mistakes won't come in to it this year though. I've been doing well in practice and if I can perform up to that standard I should get along fine. I'm quite relaxed about it all at the moment, which is strange for me. I normally get all worked up for no reason about anything at any opportunity!!

Results will of course be posted here but they will be on the WMC website before probably.