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Last night was my first night back at (Bushidokan) training. It’s only 22 weeks (roughly) to the Black Belt grading, and about 10 weeks to the candidacy tests (whether we’re allowed to go for Black Belt this time around), so it’s time to start getting into it.

We’re on a limited summertime schedule so last nights class was a mix of all ranks from white to almost black, run by the senior non-black belt student (Jeff). This meant revisiting some basics and a bit of fun. It was sweltering in the dojo so it didn’t take much to start sweating. We did cover some of the ground defence stuff, which is an area I need to put a lot of practice into.

It was interesting to see how the body shaped up after a break over Christmas. Whilst the cardio seemed pretty good with the walking/riding I’ve done over summer, the notice the strength seems to have lost it’s edge; a long bout of pushups and core strength exercise beat me. Time to start the push-ups and sit-ups, as well as getting back into the lean and fit classes.

I also had a bit of residual stiffness, particularly in my shins, from the trailwalk training walk on Sunday. I can see balancing martial arts and trialwalk training will be a challenge until I achieve a reasonable level of fitness. The two are suppose to complement each other, not cancel each other out!

Yesterday was our first training walk. We walked about 19klms over part of the trail (Checkpoint 1 at Churchill National Park to Checkpoint 2 at Lysterfield Lake and back again). We started at about 8:30 in the morning and finished about lunch time. It started out cool but warmed up. Of our 12 team members and 1 support crew we started with five walkers and our support person Rod. There are some challenging hills in this part of the walk and it was a good chance to asses early fitness.
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Last night I visited the Active Feet store in Heathmont and bought a pair of runners. The sales folks there are great; the girl looking after me was a final year podiatry student and really knew her stuff. After walking on the treadmill and explaining the type of walk I needed we worked through different shoes to see which would give me the best posture and gait. The Brooks Adrenaline ASR’s, a trail running shoe. After walking around the store, she showed me a different way to lace the shoe up to reduce the amount of heel slip. I also bought a special pair of socks that are supposed to reduce the chance of blistering.

Tomorrow is our first team training walk. We’re covering 18lkms on the trail (Checkpoint 1 -> 2 and back again) over some mildly hilly terrain. Weather is due to be mild. I’m looking forward to it. It will be a good initial test of the new shoes.

Well it’s Jan 1, 2009. Time to start planning for the two big personal goals for the year; completing the OXFAM Trailwalk with the teams from Ultimate and passing my Black Belt Grading in June.
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