I’m writing this Sunday evening, August 8th, but am serializing an otherwise overly long journal entry and back-dating those portions which happened earlier in the week. Hopefully this will make writing (and reading) these pieces more "manageable." In any event, the last four days have been incredibly busy ones, every one of which has included a fair amount of physical exertion. I'm downright pooped.

Thursday’s karate practice was easily the most strenuous aerobic workout I’ve had in the last – gee, I dunno – six years? After the usual 15 minute warm-up, we moved right on into our typical, regimented practice. Later we rehearsed Heian Shodan, the kata introduced on the previous Tuesday, and continued to do so until the end of the hour. Once the black belts had left our group, the remaining browns and whites moved to a section of the gym and took turns at leading the kata, counting the movements off one by one. In this “breakout” group, there were six of us, and I estimate that each of us led the kata at least 7 times each, so in the span of about 30 minutes we completed at least 42 repitions of the form. We may very well have managed to do Heian Shodan more than that since carrying out the kata's collection of movements actually takes far less than 60 seconds, and if I remember correctly, when done right, 15 seconds are ideal.

The little mercy after this workout was the rapidly dropping temperature. Upon exiting the Neurosciences Hospital (the perfect place for the dojo/gym. If anyone ever gets hit in the head and suffers cranial trauma, we’re in the right place for quick treatment) my beet-red face met with light rain and chill air. Later I took a quick swim in Fidelity Court’s swimming pool, where I was (again) pleasantly surprised by its tepid water. (It’s easy to forget that water is a pretty good heat sink and not subject to quick fluctuations in temperature.)