Apart from the whole Stucky obsession, the other thing keeping me busy these days is sports! And it's March madness, so time to bring out the icon for that other Bucky. (Though how awesome would a Winter Soldier Bucky Badger icon be? I wish I could still draw.)

The Wisconsin Badgers beat the Virginia Tech Hokies (and seriously, Virginia Tech, the Hokies?) on Thursday night, so they'll be playing Villanova this afternoon. Considering Villanova is a #1 seed, this could so south quickly. Or not.

I won't be watching the game live because I'll be taking Ros to her second last hockey practice of the season. Yay for the imminent end of the hockey season! Although also boo, because that means I've only got two of my hockey lessons left. I'm enjoying it rather more than I thought I would, though I still kinda suck. My goals were 1)stopping, 2) crossovers and 3) changing direction without stopping. I've got the stopping down, the right foot crossovers are coming but the left ones are still terrifying, and I can kinda go from backwards to forwards without stopping but not forwards to backwards.

I don't know that I ever want to play in a league (though scrimmages are actually fun now that my skating's a bit better and I finally splurged and got a properly fitted pair of skates), but I may sign up for lessons again next year.

My final sports news is that we finally got the pictures from our Taekwondo Black Belt Spectacular. My favourite is actually from the technical rehearsal of the self defence part of the ceremony, me kicking my partner, one of the fourth degree candidates:


( A couple more pics below the cut )

I have unfortunately become one of those people who gets their black belt and then drastically cuts back on their training. Mostly because I tore my piriformis muscle (which is a little muscle behind your glute, so I officially have a pain in the butt) at a class in September and the stupid thing is taking forever to heal.

I am also extremely tired.

I'll write about the whole (fabulous! terrifying!) experience later, but for now I thought I'd mention that the video of the event will be up for a few days here:

https://livestream.com/TDSMM/BBS2016

The whole thing is worth watching, but my musical form starts at 1h03m if you're curious about that.

I know, I disappear for ages, and then I post a ton in two days. But I got some cool news yesterday.

My musical form has been picked for the Black Belt Spectacular!

What that means in practical terms is I get to perform the form I choreographed in front of about 300 people.

Cool! And more than a little terrifying. And also, a huge honour. There were 24 of us doing black belts this year, from 14 first degrees to 3 fourth degrees, and there were about 10 of us picked to perform at the Spectacular. Really, they could have picked any of us; everyone's forms were great.

I think I got through by picking music that wasn't contemporary pop (I used the theme song from Once Upon a Time in China) and having a cool costume (black silk jacket with gold Chinese characters, flippy little black skirt and black leggings with gold laces up the side).

I have earned my black belt!

And I am more tired and sore than I can ever remember being.

More, once I have had time to recover and process.

Three Weeks, Friday, I'll be starting my Power Weekend Black Belt test. Where I'll get to do a lot of stuff like this:


And also see how much endurance I have. (The test starts Friday evening at 8 p.m., and ends Sunday morning around 9 a.m. I've been told not to expect much sleep in that time.)

A week this Friday, I'll be participating in the final day of our martial arts school's four day charity walk to Niagara Falls. The school's foundation supports a number of children's organizations in the Philippines, Guyana and our local neighbourhood.

If you'd like, you can sponsor me for the walk (I'm Pauline Z.), and find out more about it, at
http://foundation.desantos.ca/

Poking my head up from black belt training for this year's edition of March Madness. The Badgers lost some of their key players from last year's Final Four team to graduation, so I wasn't sure how it would go. They were up against Pitt in a low-scoring, ugly game, but they managed to win, 47-43. So they'll have at least one more game on Sunday.

In other news, I'm down to the final weeks of training for the black belt. My shoulder has fully recovered. Now I'm just hoping my chronically creaky knees make it through to the end.

In five weeks, Ros and I are doing the dojang's* charity walk. The black belt candidates do an annual four day walk from Toronto to Niagara Falls in support of school programs in the Philippines, Guyana, and Toronto. Ros and I are doing the 25K final day.

In seven weeks, it's Power weekend. That's the final black belt test. You spend all weekend at the dojang, getting little to no sleep as they put you through the wringer, and it all ends in a 5K run on Sunday morning. (For the Pros fans amongst you, think a mini version of SAS selection.)

Before all that happens, I've realized that with the injury and general life stuff, I've fallen way behind in my thousand form. That's the form I'm supposed to do a thousand times before testing. I've run the numbers, and I've got to do the form 15 times a day for the next 49 days. And that's on top of practising all the other forms, keeping up my fitness training and running. Woo hoo.

The end is in sight, and that's a good thing. This is not the sort of pace I could maintain long term, and I fully intend to keel over at the end of it all. But in the meantime, all four of us middle-aged gals who are doing their first degrees are getting together for drinks in a couple of weeks to commiserate and bond.

*Dojang is the Korean version of dojo.

Yesterday was the first serious test for my black belt: four hours, covering fitness, sparring, forms, weapons and self-defence. My main goals for the test were not mucking it up, and not getting injured.

I didn't quite manage that second goal.

It mostly went well. I got through the fitness section, did well in sparring (earning surprised respect from one of the younger whipper snapper black belts I managed to hold my own against), and did all my forms solidly with only a few glitches.

Then we got to self-defence, always my bête noire. They started us off with simple shoulder rolls from the ground. Which I shouldn't have even attempted. (I don't do break falls or take downs any more, since there's a high probably of a serious back or neck injury if I do.) But I was feeling cocky, and I thought "it's just a little shoulder roll. How bad can it be?"

Pretty bad, it turns out. Though not nearly as bad as it could have been.

I got out of alignment on the first roll, landed badly, and wrenched something in my shoulder. It took a while before they could get me up off the floor, and then one of our instructors taped up my arm so it wouldn't jar, one of the school's office staff escorted me to Emergency to have it checked out, and another instructor drove my car home.

The ER doctor was a bit taken aback at my x-ray (that shoulder got completely rebuilt when I was three, so even with no injury it's a bit of a mess) but he reckons it's a separated shoulder with an associated sprained ligament. They gave me a sling, and have referred me to the orthopaedic clinic at the hospital, who I've been assured will call within two days.

A quick search on the Mayo clinic site shows it's not the worst injury to have, and they mostly heal within 2 to 3 weeks as long as you haven't ruptured a ligament. But for a few days at least, I'm going to have to a lot one handed. (This is my first foray into typing, which isn't going too badly, but I wouldn't want to be on the computer for long.)

Hopefully, this has knocked the last of my stupid pride about not being able to do certain things during training. Rolls are now officially on the no fly list, along with all the other ground work stuff.

The one silver lining to this particular cloud is that I'm going to take a day or two off work to get to the point where moving wrong and sneezing don't cause eye-watering agony, and that means a couple of days of watching TV and movies. Which I haven't done in months! Yay for silver linings!

I've been struggling to find any time at all to get on the computer since we've been back from London. Either I'm constantly on the run, or I pass out as soon as Ros does. But I've finally got a few minutes, and I realized I'm behind on footie updates.

There was a game while we were in London, and my former co-coach took that one over for us. She got a dad to help run the line-ups, a few more dads to put up the nets. (They're full-sized nets, now, and she's my height, so reaching the crossbar isn't even an option for either of us.) She said the girls played really well, and they held the other team to a draw, 1 - 1.

Our first game back we played a team with three of our best players from our team two years ago. Both teams played really well and dug in. They scored first, then we tied them up, but they managed to score a final goal to win 2 - 1.

And our game this week was against a team that was fast and, according to my girls, really pushy. But our girls held firm and managed to win 3 - 1. (It was nearly 3 - 2. They scored right at the end, but it turns out that time was already up and the ref's whistle just wasn't working.)

There have been Taekwando developments as well.

On Saturday, I attended the meeting to kick off the new black belt cycle. Looks like I'll be testing for my black belt next year. That means a serious commitment: four classes a week, including a 6:45 a.m. two hour class on Saturdays, extra training at home, running a certain mileage a week, and getting all the forms so I can do them in my sleep. I'm looking forward to it--I'll be training with a few of my friends at the club who are at the same point--but it's going to take a lot of indulgence from the Sweetie, since I'll be doing at least one evening class a week. And it's going to mean I have to really prioritize what I have time to do.

I've been struggling, and failing to find time to write of late, and I've only managed to grab the occasional hour to watch any TV. Since I've got to be up early three days anyway for early classes, I've got a possible scheme which will allow for writing. I'm thinking of going to bed early, like right after Ros early, and then getting up around 5 every day. On the days I don't have Taekwando, that'll give me an hour of writing time before everyone else is awake.

Of course, the problem with this scheme is that I'm a total night owl, and going to bed early is something I've never quite been able to manage. It also means that I'll mostly be swearing off TV for the coming year, which is annoying.

Oh, and the fly in the ointment in all of this is my continued problems with anaphylaxis as a result of exercise. I'm going to try to gradually build up my running and see if I can train my body not to swell up when I do cardio.

We shall see how it all goes...

In further Taekwando news, Ros tested for her brown belt last night! She's now edging closer to black, and she's now considered a Masters student. Which means her classes are now an hour, and she gets to train with the cool weapons, like sais and kamas.

It also means she'll likely be going for her black belt the year after I do, which means I'll probably end up doing two years for the Saturday black belt training sessions, because if I'm going to take Ros, I might as well do the training.

( Here's me with Ros after the belt ceremony )

One of the things taking my time lately has been Taekwando training. I figured I'd be doing my next grading in June, but three weeks ago one of our instructors informed me I'd be grading this month. At which point I freaked out, and then spent a lot of time making sure I knew all my forms.

Tonight was the grading, and I actually did pretty good. I'm now a brown belt with black stripe, which puts me four belts from black.


I'm feeling pretty good about my skill level, but now the new thing freaking me out is everyone at the school telling me I'll be going for my black belt next year. Ummm.... (Black belt training is pretty serious at this school. They expect you to do four classes a week for a year with extra training on the side, and it all culminates with the Power Weekend, where you stay at the school all weekend and they put you through the wringer.)

But for now, I'm not going to worry about that. I'm just going to enjoy having got through another grading.

( A few more pics this way. )