Wow. Ok. Last November, a mess of us went to Miami, FL. As always, I tried to hit up National Park Service facilities, and the first of these that I noticed was really close to Miami was Biscayne National Park
This was me, Erin, Laura, Peter, Laura’s friend Sara, Cassandra, Aletta, Richard and Beth. Or at least that’s who I have photos of, and we were there on November 10, 2007.
swam 750 yards (30 laps) this morning. ariele (one of the people i TA with) came with, although she left early because she was ill. she seems psyched to swim though, and we are going to go again friday morning (we both TA too early tomorrow morning) and this is probably a good thing. i miss swimming with jenny (and occasionally amittai) but having people around who have a stake in you going, at least to some marginal extent, is *huge* impetus for me to actually keep up with things. and i really like swimming, and i’m even willing to bet that it is pretty good for me.
it is just impressive that i can go to the pool at 7.30 am, swim for a while, then go home and still not be motivated to get up and go anywhere. bah. anyway. ta!
500 yard swum this morning. whee! before it got too hot, too.
karate this evening; more enjoyable that normal. normal sensei wasn’t there, one of the new dan rank guys is, and i really liked him. and also this other sensei who trained with the collamer-jones dojo in new york, which also follows master shimabuku , and not master angi uezu. who is also an amazing karateka, but yeah. you get used to certain styles of things. davila-sensei, out here, is just a bit too , i don’t know. something. informal, maybe.
this is easier if i do it daily. ah well.
swam on monday, 1000 yards. i only really do crawl and breaststroke, interspersed with using the kickboard and leg floaty thing (ie, restricting your use to your legs and your arms, respectively). i actually feel like i might be improving my strokes a little, which is good. no swimming this week though, cause the pool is closed. 😛
karate yesterday. more of the same. my kata is progressing reasonably. matt gave me some more good comments which i hope to be able to incorporate today. one of the things i want to work on the most is to just pick a speed to perform the kata it, and stick to it. i rush when i’m performing for judges, and then go too slow when i’m just doing it for commentary. and i need to work a couple of my stances more. but it seems to be progressing.
i wonder if wren-sensei and heath-sensei in berkeley will have anything to say about it. especially wren-sensei. she is amazing!
wednesday. another half mile warmup run. then karate class. then swimming with miss hu (1000 yds).
karate, you know, class. i got some good chances to offer some commentary and help, and also time to work on my own stuff. comments matt made to me after last class about my kata for the tournament were really helpful and let me make a couple of big changes. apparently i would start with good focus on techniques, but as i would do them, my attention would drift to my techniques. so, when i went through the kata deliberately trying to avoid that, i had this amazing moment of “wow! i can see much less of my techniques!!”. this was kind of neat, as i totally hadn’t realized i was doing it, and this was nice affirmation that i was now doing it better.
we also practiced sparring again. i do actually seem to be getting better, at least better than when i started , a year and a half ago or so. we don’t really practice all that often normally, so this higher level of practice is good. dimitri punched very well at my arm though at one point, i have a giant dark bruise this morning to show for it. but i did very well, i beat both him and james. sparring with james (a yellow belt) was kind of interesting. he is quite good for his beginning level, all things being equal, but from my vaunted quasi-intermediate type level, i very much felt like i was much more aware of what was going on in our bout. not that i was necessarily in *control* of it, not the way the senseis can be, but i was actually in control of what i was doing, and responding fairly well to what he was doing, such that i actually responded to opportunities and scored well that way.
i continue to be stupid lame.
i think too many social events and nasty weather are conspiring against me.
wednesday i did karate. and thursday i swam, which was a lot of fun, because it devolved into jenny hu and i acting like 7 year olds, and squirting each other with water and all sorts of fun. she also showed me how to do flipturns again, which was cool. i would guess i swam ~1000 yards. i know it was at least 800, and then i swam a bunch more but wasn’t keeping track.
