Saturday, March 27, 2010

Day 84

What a day! There's so much to download and I don't think I'm capable of it at the moment. My throat is raw, I just finally got to eat dinner (uh, it's 10:40pm) and my body is aching. But, I'm also a little wired and excited and not really ready to go to bed. So, what the hell. Here's the highlight reel:

I took silver in my form. Master Dylan said I was robbed and I was a little disappointed but, it's ok. My form was awesome, full of snap and power, and a silver medal is very respectable.

I spent the next 8 hours wandering through the conference center, doing some sparring drills with other students, stretching and generally trying to stay patient and be ready for when my age group was finally called. By the way, when they called my age group this is what they said over the loudspeaker: Senior division ages 32 and up please go to the staging area. Yes, I'm in the senior division. Awesome.

While watching some of the black belts spar, one of the masters at another TKD studio turned and said to me, "Hey, I know you! You're Kelsi. Your form was great!" and then he shook my hand. He came to our studio once to watch our belt test and he remembered me. That made me feel really good.

In the staging area, I'm paired with a group of 18 year olds. I think there was one 22 year old. Still, most of them are still in high school. One of them looked at me and asked how old I am. I just looked at her and bluntly said, "40". They were all pleasingly shocked and surprised and one girl even came over to me to look at my event badge. And then I went on to win gold. Senior division my ass.

When entering the final staging area, the woman who took my paperwork looked up at me and said, "Hey! How are you doing! It's so good to see you. And wow, look at you! You're a red belt now! That's great!" and she shook my hand. Now this may just seem like an overly friendly event volunteer but I remembered her from last year, too. She was a red belt then and I was an orange stripe belt at my first tournament. I didn't really have any interaction with her other than being in the staging area at the same time. She's rather striking looking so I remembered her but I certainly wouldn't have expected her to remember me. But I guess I do sort of stand out in the sea of other tae kwon do students. There's just not that many blond haired, blue eyed women in the sport!! Especially in the senior division!

Finally, the sparring. It was freaking awesome. I got in as many head kicks as I could and stayed relaxed. I knocked her off balance every time she tried one of her push kicks. Nothing felt particularly hard. I didn't feel like any of the kicks that she landed had any power in them. And I never let up. My throat is raw from sucking air but I can live with that. I took gold!!!

And now it's 11:00pm and it's about time I went to bed. I've been up since 5:00am and didn't get back to my house until 10:00pm. That's a really long day.

Tomorrow I have a date with my Dean while Jack's at his soccer game.

Sweet dreams.

1 comment:

Anonymous said...

Just got a chance to catch up on my reading..
Awesome Job!!
Jen