I’m sitting here in my desk chair, aching all over, and for the most part I have no idea why.
On Friday evening some of us from the club took to the mighty Corn Exchange again for “a few beers to unwind”, which (almost inevitably) turned into a mini-session. Still, everyone had a great time and there was plenty of dancing.
On Saturday we took Murf down to the beach for a damn good run. He’s getting harder to wear out now that he’s getting bigger, but thanks to my friend and her three hounds we managed it. He made amazing progress in actually fetching something thrown for him too, in stark contrast to his usual routine of watching it and then looking at you as if to say “It’s all the way over there now, how am I supposed to play with it?”. He’s still unsure about the water, but he’s getting better, even if he does still have a bit of a whinge if he gets too wet.
We had some friends over in the evening and again, a few drinks which was nice as we got to christen the newly mended and painted living room – ok, it was on plastic garden furniture, but it was good nonetheless. I braved the Cornish drizzle the next morning to forage for bacon, and once everyone left, Murf went to his first ever dog show. He was so good and didn’t make a fuss, despite it dragging on for hours. The obvious prejudice against sad looking ginger spaniels meant he didn’t place in the pedigree puppy class, but he did win a raffle prize (a cuddly toy dog which he likes to use as a pillow), and also 3rd place in ‘Most appealing eyes’, meaning he took home a rosette!
I went almost straight from there to training, which involved a lot of leg work including loads of axe-kick drills, and some skip and boost roundhouse work for sparring. We had a fight squad session after the main class and (typically) I managed to take a heavy knock to my knee with the very last action of my first fight and had to sit the rest out as a corner referee. This was our last session before heading up to London this weekend for the world champ’s, so we’ll have to wait and see how that goes.
Then back to this morning, and as I mentioned right at the top of this entry, I’m in quite a lot of pain. Oddly enough it’s not in my knee – although it is tender to the touch – but rather my back. I feel like a total old man so far and can barely move about, and had shooting pains across the tops of my ribs. Who’d have thought hitting 30 in May would have such a drastically elderly effect on me already!