The past two Sundays I have gone to the school to do some extra training. The first pretest is Tuesday. Last week I did some jump rope for conditioning, then ran through all the under black belt forms for more conditioning. Then I worked some Taebek for battle of Columbus prep and figured out that my back stance on the right side is not as good as on the left, so I've been fixing that. Today I did some more jump roping and then worked on all the black belt forms. I completely forgot the middle of one of the 1st dan forms, so I'll have to fix that in class tomorrow. Came home and lifted some weights so that I can be extra mighty. Track starts next week, although the conflicts with TKD don't really start until April when the meets start. Practices officially start on the 10th, but we have a meeting next week to get everything set up.

Steve is out running 13 miles today as part of marathon training. I have no idea how he does it (he's crazy), as the furthest I've ever run at once is 6 miles, and I wasn't particularly fond of that. I'm very proud of him for sticking with his running schedule through rain, snow, and aching joints. I think this week marks the half way point.

I'm officially signed up for the battle of columbus for forms. Returning to the site of last year's ACL incident. I anticipate this year being injury free. I don't forsee myself getting hurt doing one form, and Steve's not competing since he's getting ready for the flying pig.

The intraschool tournament was saturday and went well. Everything stayed close to on schedule and we were able to get everything cleaned up before we left. A group went to dinner afterwards, which was a good time. Steve was the "wrangler" which involves organizing the children and getting the divisions to their rings. He may be stuck with that job from now on though, becasue he was too good at it.

I will be starting the sunday workouts this comming sunday. Hopefully those will help me to get enough practice in even though track will start to conflict soon. I've been sick the past week, so I havn't been doing a whole lot of training at home recently, but that should pick up again this week.

Last night was the black belt test meeting. The test will actually be May 17. Best news of the night is that the fast and meditation will happen while my student teacher is still around. So, I can let her teach instead of trying to deal with many classes while hungry. To make up for track season, I will be going into the school sunday mornings to work out. I will also have to be juggling around my class schedule to work around the meets.

Memory

We had a teacher workday today. Over the course of the day, we had a memory tournament (the game you played when you were five). I won two games and made it to the "elite eight", but lost. Then, later in the day, we all gathered around a table in the library to watch the finals. Adults cheering on other adults in a memory game...teachers are weird. The art teacher took pictures to document the event.

In other news, I have been increasing the amount of flexibility work that I'm doing outside of TKD classes. I'm also working on jumping drills and the heavy bag on evenings when I'm not in class. I run a couple times a week.

3rd degree

Master K looked at the black belt cards tonight and the plan is for me to bo test in April and then test for 3rd degree in May. This is going to be a very busy spring. I will probably be going into the school on Sundays to do some extra working out since track will start interfering will class times about once a week starting in March. I also plan to be training for a national forms competition, but that isn't till summer and I'll be working forms that I also have to be practicing for the 3rd dan test, so that shouldn't necessarily be too much extra time on top of what I'm already putting in (which will become significant).

I'm trying to increase my upper body strength and get better with hand techniques. I've been working on the heavy bag I got Steve for Christmas and with weights down in the basement. I'm also trying to run more and increase ab work for general fitness type stuff. I have to try to get any running conditioning I want to do in now because ironically, once track starts it becomes hard for me to find time to run at all during the week.

A few recent dog pics

Rowlf and me with the tree





Snow Day!

less ACL more other randomness

Haven't written in a while. The ACL is pretty much recovered, so there isn't much to say about that. However, I may have some big tests comming up for TKD this spring (possibly 3rd dan and forms competitions). So this blog may become focused on me describing my progress in that area rather than rehab.