Catch-up blog

Yeah, I’ve been lazy again, so here’s an update of what I’ve done since my last blog.

On Wednesday I went to the gym and did my routine with the increased weights, so nothing interesting to write about.

Thursday we had training, and to mix things up we focused on hand locks for various scenarios. The main lesson for me: Listen to your instructor and do exactly what he does or tells you to do. When it comes to Aiki, the devil is in the detail and a small change in what you do can make a world of a difference. Yes, Aiki is taught in our school, but only very slowly and focused on a few techniques, which are progressively introduced at different belt ranks. So for now I’ll leave it at that and will go into more detail as the techniques become part of my grading requirement.

Friday and Saturday then were rest days, although we did go body boarding for a couple of hours on Saturday morning. But this rest phase had a purpose, as today was the big “race” day. The HBF (that’s a health insurance in WA) freeway bike hike was on this morning; 60km down the freeway. I managed to do it in less than 2 hours (1:55 to be exact). A pretty good effort I recon, considering I was on my cheap and nasty mountain bike, with tires resembling those of a tractor (a quote by my flatmate I found very appropriate). I didn’t even have the opportunity to race in a group of riders (apparently this really helps a lot for bike races), because I started in what turned out to be the wrong starting group. There was no one I could have ridden with, as I was overtaking slower clusters of riders all the way to the finish... I’ll remember to start in a faster starting group for next time.
And this afternoon TKD training, that will be fun with legs that feel as if they were made of concrete.