Quick Update

Some brief periods of roadwork after Friday's training:

Saturday, June 28: 26 minutes
Monday, June 30: 24 minutes

Also, some good news: Chad at GoTime said he will help arrange some sparring for me. Since my training times have varied a lot recently, it has been hard to get much sparring practice, but I am hoping we can change that soon. I have been working on various improvements to my technique and would like to do some sparring to practice them under "real" conditions.

Wednesday's Training

Today was a good day at training. We had a good attendance at the practice. In addition to Bernard and me, Kevin, Cory, Matt, and the Judge were there. Andrew stopped by at the end, but did not join us. Kevin and Matt sparred today. It was Matt's first time; he enjoyed it. I did not spar because I got to the workout late and I focused on trying to make up for the shorter workout by increasing the intensity of my work. I hope it helped.

I'll spar next week. Bernard has designated Wednesdays as "sparring days." Of course, we will be able to spar on Mondays, too, but Bernard asked that we tell everyone to be there at 5:45 p.m. on Wednesdays so that we can all have a set time to get some sparring practice. That sounds good to me. It will help us have a regular time to get some work with the other boxers on the team. I'll tell Tim about it tomorrow and send out an e-mail announcement to the rest of the guys.

As for the workout itself, things went pretty well. Here's the breakdown.

• 43 minutes of roadwork
• 5 rounds on the pads with Bernard
• 3 rounds of pivoting drills (holding a broom handle across the shoulders and pivoting from left to right while in a boxing stance)
• 2 rounds on the heavy bag
• 2 rounds on the double-end bag
• 1 round on the uppercut bag
• 1 round of stretching

That's 14 rounds plus the roadwork. Not too bad. It was raining like a monsoon here in Chicago all day today, so fitting the roadwork in was a challenge. I am glad I did it, though.

It will be fun to have a set time each week for sparring. I need the practice and I hope the rest of the guy will like the idea.