A Beat Down

Still trying to figure out how I hurt my wrist during last night's sparring session. It might have happened while I was trying to deflect a punch from Sarah. After it was all over, I realized, "She's gotten good over the past few months." I also realized that I had taken a good ass whupping.

Steve told me, "You can't tell yourself that you're tired. Suck it up!" But inside my head, I kept yelling for the bell to ring to end the rounds. My problems began when I started out too fast in round one. Steve warned me to pace myself. When the fourth round came around, I was dying, having spent the previous three rounds plodding around the canvas. I remember a series of right and left hooks raining towards my head. One of them hit me hard enough to stun me.

I'm sure that Laura, the journalism student, got an eyefull of stuff to write about that. She talked to several of the other boxers, and had met with Steve a couple of days before, so she was able to get a lot of material. She was really surprised to find out that two other sparrers, Mike and Sarah (I kept calling his wife Cheryl, and she is the other Sarah, not the one who beat me) were married.

It was sort of like old home week again on Wednesday night. The gym was packed, as I figured it would be coming off of a holiday. Keith, a good boxer who unfortunately, was low on motivation, showed up. He told me he was planning to come back into the gym to work out more regularly.

Rob, who will soon be licensed as a pastor, also came in. Rob always asks about how things are going at my church, then we get into discussions about God and religion. God turned Rob's life around. He had been involved in a lot of bad stuff that eventually put him in jail when he was a young man. These days, he's a solid family man, has a steady job, and has his life on track.

The darn chest cold is still hanging on. One of the choir members told me during rehearsal tonight that maybe it wasn't a good idea for me to spar. Maybe so. A turtle would have been faster than me last night. I was sitting with my head in my hands at work earlier, and Les asked what was wrong. "I'm just tired and sore," I said.