pool, friends, training, etc

I’m here, eating my big breakfast, hanging out in my chatroom with amazingly awesome people.

aaaah.

Saturday was actually a national holiday, but I worked extra bonus lessons. It was kind of a weird day because I worked at a different school than usual and had to use a map to find it. After work, I went swimming, since gyms were closed because of the holiday. I realized that I really am not so good at swimming. I used to take elementary swimming lessons when I was a kid, so I know the front crawl, the breast stroke, and the back stroke….and of course, the doggy paddle, but that’s it. ^^;; I think I’m doing the front crawl wrong because I got a crick in my neck.

I don’t really feel comfortable at a public pool because I feel blind and naked. A) I feel uncomfortable in tight fitting spandex like a bathing suit, and B) once I take my glasses off, I can’t see a damn thing. I’m not familiar with the pool area, so I’m squinting, trying not to slip, to find the right speed lane (slow, medium, fast), and making sure that if some staff is trying to make eye contact, I’m not ignoring them.

On Sunday, I woke up and did push-ups and calisthenics in my apartment. I worked as usual, and I think I just did chores and went home. Yesterday was Monday. I wanted to meet a coach, but he was busy, so I just worked out at the gym by myself.

Actually….I’ve been reflecting. I miss being on a team, like when I was with Keishukai. 🙁 I guess I call the AACC a team, but I still consider myself freelance, and I can’t really adjust to their training style much of the time. (long time span, training late late into the night, etc) A team really goes along way towards mental well-being.

(Monday) I happened to be practicing at the same time as Team Tackler. (Yoshihiro “Kiss” Nakao, TK, etc link about team tackler ) They were on one side of the gym, I was on the other. I timed my training on the heavy bag to their sparring sessions, and it REALLY helped me to hear them screaming at each other, hearing “ONE MORE MINUTE, GO HARDER!” etc. I pretended they were screaming at me.

Anyway, I should have gone longer, but my shoulders were getting sore. I can never seem to reach the elite conditioning status I consider ideal. 🙁 Megumi said that most athletes can’t, and nobody is ever satisfied. Well…heh

So then I went to meet Michele and Gloria, the later being the newest addition to our work-team, but Michele’s business took longer than expected – by two hours. PERFECT. I had brought The Fighter’s Mind and it was the perfect opportunity to read it. (My cell phone was running out of batteries so I COULDN”T play my game. XD) I read about 60 pages. It was great and thought provoking. I got this GREAT raisin bread in Shinagawa station, and by that mean like 90% raisins. SO GOOD.

I enjoyed chatting with them, and then went to the dojo where Billy held mitts for me, and I trained with Sakura. I got to work my cardio a lot by doing sprawl in between hitting mitts.

Not related to anything above….I really love my supervisor’s sense of humor. I was telling him how there are a few abnormal genes in my family, like obsessive compulsive gene and ADD among others, and he was like, “…get the hell out of my office.” lol Then one of the staff said to me in front of him, “Thanks for the note about the broken table in room 7…” he said, “What, Roxy broke the table? YOU’RE FIRED!” XD