Before the Golden Gloves Semi-Finals

Victor and Alan watch as Andres spars.  Victor is a friend of Andres; I thought Victor was his brother at first because they resembled each other.  Alan didn't want Andres to overextend himself, but he wanted him to get some work in before the next bout at the Chicago Golden Gloves.

Martin sparred with Andres first.  Previously when Martin sparred with Andres, he didn't finish the rounds.  But this time, Martin hung in there with him.  "Andres hits very hard," Martin said afterwards.

Victor sparred with Andres.  "Now I'm going to get beat up, but that's okay," Victor joked as I put the gloves on him.  I had noticed how Victor was throwing punches on the bags earlier, and it wasn't bad.  He kept up with his friend, even after Andres caught him with a good shot.

Alan got in the ring last with Andres.  Alan got hit with a hard right.  The coach came back with a flurry of punches and said, "Do you think I'm 280 pounds?"  Then Alan surprised Andres with an overhand right.  The look on Andres' face was priceless.

I noticed that Jason was doing back spinning fists on the bags a la Shonie Carter.  "There's no back fists in boxing, you know," I told Jason.  "I know," he grinned, "but I love MMA, and I like that move."

The other day, I was going to ask Alicia about getting hand wraps.  She usually wears little white gloves, especially when hitting the speed bag.  Today, she had a pair of hand wraps, and I showed her how to wrap her hands.  The ones she had weren't very long, so we had to modify the method, but it worked.

I was shadow boxing and doing some work on the bags, including a burn out later with Andres.  I keep talking about my leg hurting, but it's not really my leg.  The pain is centered up in my hip area.  It just travels down my left leg sometimes, but not as often as it used to do.  It bothered me a little, and I had to sit down a couple of times.  "It's just taking longer than usual to heal.  Also, because I have diabetes, I take extra long to heal up," I told Alan later.  "Yeah, keep telling yourself that, Hillari," Alan grinned.