the belt i wear is black

Well, I finally received my black belt in Tae Kwon Do this weekend. I've been training for almost four and a half years to reach this point. Saturday wasn't really quite as bad as I previously expected either. When we got word that my instructor's teacher would be coming in for the test, I feared that the test would be unduly long and excruciating, but that turned out to not be the case. No, in fact, the test was very much like most of the other tests I have been through. In fact, although it was a black belt test, the students from one of the college white belt classes were also testing, so this helped to ease the situation a little bit.

During the test, I broke both a board with a spinning wheel kick, and a concrete block with a downward palm. We also did a bit of sparring and some forms. Of course, the previous Saturday was the true test of our physical prowess. Last Saturday, we ran 2 miles, ten 150-yard wind sprints, jumped rope for 10 minutes, did ab workouts for 5 minutes, and finished off with a review of all of our material. That was quite grueling, but surviveable at least. Perhaps I really do need to start running more often. I actually seem to be improving a bit. :)

invasion of the pigs

Our parking lot just got taken over by seven pigs. I guess that's what you get for having an office all the way out in the middle of "farm country". I've never seen any this big before though. All I can think of is bacon....mmmmmmmm.... :)