The basement will never be the same. This thing is so cool that words can’t even describe it. 🙂

Title says it all for today… , and I went through 10 Sochin and a few (around 5) Bassai Dai. For reasons unknown, I was really stiff and my kata felt terrible today. We moved into doing some roundhouse kick drills with partners for around a half hour or so, I really need to get back to work on using that in sparring because I forgot how much I liked it. 🙂

I crossed the 80% mark today, we’re going to try to fire out the rest of this 2000 kata goal by Thanksgiving. With a few more weekends of 100 in store, I think we should be able to do that pretty easily.

I had a little trouble getting motivated to train tonight… I was able to squeak out 17 Sochin before class started.

Tonight’s workouts circulated around partner training concepts. During the first class, my Dad and I partnered up and we did some distance and timing drills with reverse punch and lunge punch. For reasons unknown, I constantly hit him in the navel which proved to be pretty darned entertaining. 🙂 Dad and I haven’t sparred enough lately, I forgot how much fun it is.

In between classes, my good buddy and I mixed it up a little. It was a lot of fun until my side kick and his reverse punch collided. It was a solid hit on both sides, the bottom of my foot is bruised already and I know his hand was bothering him. I think that situations like this will continue to occur as the run-up to the Sandan test begins for my eligible dojomates and we do more sparring, I hope Mike’s hand is OK.

The second class was more partner training, we did line drills using different techniques and finished off with some slow sparring. My sparring felt relatively good tonight, nothing spectacular. It was still a good workout, looking forward to more on Saturday.

Tonight we spent the pre-class and first class doing kata. I had 10 Sochin in before class, along with 5 Bassai Dai with Dad. After arrived and class started, we got another 15 kata in by alternating with and . We had some fine points spotted by , which really helped the feel of the opening movement… he recommended that we form the downward strike more out from our body toward the opponents stomach and it really made the movement feel much stronger. I ended up the night with a grand total of 25 Sochin, 5 Bassai Dai.

After we finished the kata workout, everyone had that special gleam in their eyes which pointed strongly to a sparring workout. I had a pretty ok night… not terrible, but not that great either. Matches of note: I got pounded down by Sensei Brewer tonight… for some reason my brain was preventing me from pulling the trigger again, I had a few attempts in vain to put some combinations together but not many of them worked out very well. I sparred with Dobbleaire-san before that… that guy is a handful. He busted me pretty hard in my left eye (left a small bump, don’t know if it will be black or not), so I dished out a stiff side thrust kick as he launched himself forward to attack. It folded him over pretty good, but this is the nature of advanced karate. You dish some out, you take some back. He was looking fairly tenderized in his face, so apparently some other people are taking the same approach. I always have a good time when I spar him, I like the sense of urgency that he forces.

It was a good night, I have several bumps and bruises to show for it. That’s the hallmark of a good night of karate!

Today the guy from Sears arrived to fix our dishwasher. This is the conversation that greeted me when I opened the door:

Him: “Sears Service here to fix a dishwasher! Are you 18?”
Me: “Uh… yeah. I’m 26.”
Him: “Really? Are you sure?”
Me: “Yeah, pretty sure, thanks.”

Later, while waiting for the rinse cycle to run…

Him: “Dalcher, eh? Do you know a Harry Dalcher?”
Me: “Yes, he was my grandpa’s brother.”
Him: “I rented a house from him when I was 18. How is he?”
Me: “Uh… he passed away quite awhile ago.”
Him: “Oh… yeah, I guess that’s been quite awhile that I saw him last.”
Him: “So… is all this yours? You own this place, this stuff?”
Me: “Yes, this is my house, my dishwasher, and my giant TV as you’ve repeatedly asked me.”
Him: “Ok, just checking, you look very young.”
Me: “Thanks a lot, I suppose.”

Very strange guy, this one. I almost asked him why it was so hard to believe that I own a house, dishwasher, TV, and dog. I understand asking once, but several times? Why would I lie about being 26? Some people…

Mapleton Demo – Hook Kick
Originally uploaded by dalcher.

This shot was taken at the Mapleton demonstration during the full speed match. This was a hook kick to my good buddy … he came back to win the match quite handily. 😉

In between two very hard karate workouts, we had our annual company outing to play paintball. This year I decided to play a little more strategically, which ended up working quite well. There were a few times that I ended up WAY too close to my opponent and surrendered before I was shot out at close range, but aside from that I only got shot once during the speedball portion of the day.

I think over the course of the day I shot out around 9 people. During the speedball match, I think I inadvertantly shot one of the other side as they were heading for the exit. They didn’t have their barrel plug in or their gun held up, so I was just protecting my ass by shooting them two or three times at pretty close range. But I still feel *a little* bad about it. But not much.

Interestingly, I found myself thinking of kumite (free sparring) as I plodded my way through the woods. My teammates and I tended to plan offensives a little bit more than we did in years past resulting in me being able to kill at least one person in most rounds, sometimes two or three. I had a really great time having this sort of interaction with my friends and coworkers, where else do you get the opportunity to “avenge the death” of one of the supervisory staff??

I’ve wondered aloud on more than one occasion what would happen if we got some of our dojo together and played some paintball. That makes me imagine and in a Rambo/John Woo action movie scenario, which is always very entertaining.

I was a little sad that I never got to directly confront my good pals , , and . Maybe next year we will get to shoot it out!

I must say, I’m feeling much better after this attempt at 100 Sochin than I did after the last one. After the last one I had ongoing fatigue that lasted several days, and while I did sleep in today I’m feeling great right now. My legs don’t hurt near as much as they did after the last one and that’s a very welcome change.

This month was a record month, mostly due to a high volume at the beginning of the month and this weekend’s 100 kata success.

We missed you today. How’s the hindquarters? Hopefully you didn’t blow out your tire too badly…

Today was earmarked for our second 100 Sochin workout attempt. I was a bit late arriving, around quarter after, and I was surprised to see our very own Turner-san was there! He’s back in action after his double lung transplant and looking great. So great, in fact, he finally got the chance to kick me in the stomach a few times and he had the ability to do 25 Sochin with us. It was great to see him, and we are all really proud of him for going through what he did with such class.

On to the workout… when I had arrived, was off to the side doing Sochin. He put down an EPIC 50 Sochin in an hour, and he took another two or so to do 50 Unsu. Talk about inspiring! 🙂

We didn’t fare quite as good on time as he did, but we accomplished 101 Sochin in 3 hours and 37 minutes. This is down from around 6 hours that it took us the last time. We’re figuring out how to relax and with the relaxation came a lot more stamina. We started out doing pairs of kata back to back. We occasionally did a set of three. Then, when it was close to going-home time for we upped the game to 10 kata with just short breaks in between each (20 seconds was about what we gave ourselves). That worked out so well that we finished off the rest of the day like that after left.

He should be really proud of himself, he said that this was the most kata he had ever done in a workout. I sincerely think that he would’ve stayed with us until the end, but like everyone else he had earmarked today to get back in touch with his wife again and we can hardly blame him for that.

For that matter, everyone that came today should be proud of themselves… for resetting our expectation of how long 100 kata takes, Turner-san and Mike-san for doing more kata than they’ve ever done in a workout, and last but not least, and I for accomplishing this massive feat again.

This places me clearly within striking distance of the December 31st goal, thanks to everyone for helping to drag me up the hill! 🙂