Pulling Punches and Going Light

Professor stopped in briefly; he's going to sign up for the gym soon.  Others in attendance were St. Louis and Gabriel (the two guys sparring in the photo above), Nathaniel, Igor, Vachel, Casey, Travis, Doug, Lania,  Walter, and Fred.

Vachel asked me to take it easy before we sparred, and I did.  But I still got in some body shots and a couple of hooks.  "Hit her back!" Alan kept telling her.  Vachel did get a couple of good punches to my forehead.  After the first round ended, Vachel told Alan she was tired.  He told her to keep her hands up, but she answered it was hard to do.  We only did one more round.  Casey and Lania watched with interest.

Later, I got in one more round, this time with Lania.  Alan tried to convince Casey to spar, but she said, "No, not until I know what I'm doing!"  Lania and I only went one round, but she hits hard.  She was also very good at blocking my lefts and rights.  Several times, I put jabs out there only to have them be decisively knocked down.  Both Vachel and St. Louis advised her to take things slow.  Lania was not wearing a mouthpiece, so I had to be very careful where I was aiming my punches and go light.

Alan was telling Casey that Vachel didn't want to spar at first, but "now she loves it!"  Most of the women who've been in the gym since Alan took over as coach have tried sparring at least once.  Most of them found not bad at all.  This is how I know that Alan is a good salesman at his day job, because he's had a high success rate of convincing women to get into the ring who may not have otherwise.

I've been losing a decent amount of weight.  It started when I had to take an at-home colon test.  One of the first things those of us over 50 are told to do is to get our colons checked, so I finally took that step. I'll spare people the details of what I had to do for the test -- which I turned in to the doctor's office today -- but I will divulge that I had to watch what I ate while participating in it.  I couldn't have red meat or pork, for example.  I did eat a lot of vegetables, fish and chicken, I drank a lot of water, and as usual, I watched my sugar and salt intake.  The scale read 176 pounds the last time I checked it.  I'm still a bit too hefty for my height, but that's a better number than when I was at my heaviest, which was 210 pounds.  I'm going to try my best to keep the momentum going.