Week 3

11^th December

This week has been emotional and painful.

It started with a mental breakdown; my body was just too tired to survive from the training. I felt like I couldn’t do anything and I just sucked. I wanted to cry and go home, but I didn’t. Instead I took one afternoon off training to get my head together and for my body to recover. I felt much better the next day. During my mental breakdown Hlukhin and Lisa came over to comfort me and talk to me: a gesture I appreciated a lot.

My body is still in pain: both of my ankles are now f*cked and so are my hands, punching is very painful. My right thigh is also in pain as I was grabbling with Jame, the tiny and skinny thai boy, and kneed him hitting him right in the hip bone and causing myself serious injury.

The biggest problem is my ankles as it has limited my running capability. I have only run twice the whole week. First time was to injure them more and second time was this morning with my new anklets. Lisa was kind enough to give me a pair she found so I could run and train better. The running went fine, I can’t run too fast though as that still hurts my right ankle. I did feel good to run again. Now that I’m sitting here with me anklets off my ankles are in pain, hopefully they will survive.

There are less people at the camp now: all the Americans left and few guys are not training anymore. We also lost “Leon” yesterday as he headed to Bangkok and back to his family in France. I wish all the best for him.

This morning’s training was just for a Canadian girl and me. Chris and the two Thai boys finished their training early right after their 8 kilometres run. It was nice to get all the attention from the trainers, I just wish my body wasn’t in that much pain and I could train harder.

On Monday Chris and Jame will be fighting in Phuket, so we’ll be all heading to touristy nightmare to support the guys.

About the training

4^th December

I thought I should tell you more about the training. It starts with a run, then some skipping, stretching, warm-up, shadow boxing, sparring, grabbling, pads and optional exercise such as sit-ups etc.

Shadow boxing I have mentioned before: punching and kicking air, and trying to learn the right technique. In sparring first we normally put on shin pads and practice kicking and blocking in pairs. Then it’s turn for gloves, so it’s kicking and punching at the same time. Quite hard remember to block one’s face while kicking and other way around. Next the shin pads come off and it’s time for only punching. That’s my weakness; I just don’t seem how to block my face properly, but I’m getting there.

Grabbling is a lot of fun, but it takes a lot of energy. It’s all about trying to lock the other one around the neck or somehow hold the other person so you can either knee them or throw them on the floor. Between all these changes for more or less protection we always do ten push-ups, after shadow boxing it’s three sets of ten.

Kicking the pads is where you can really let the power out, if you have any left. You kick and punch pads, while the trainer is trying to teach you the right technique. One round usually ends in ten high kicks on each side with all the power you have. Normally we do two rounds of pads.

After the pads I have started doing hundred front kicks kicking the bag and after hundred sit-ups. Sometimes I also try to do a front kick and knee combination or just kneeing the bag, both of them require a lot of energy though so I’m trying to take it easy while I’m building my endurance.   

At the moment I’m bruised all over my body, my right ankle and calf hurt, and my right hand hurts from punching. Still somehow I manage to do the runs and the training. Sleeping in between definitely helps and just the love for the training.

Train, sleep, train.

3^rd December

The last week has been all about training and sleeping. Every day I have woken up at 6.50am for a 5km run followed by stretching and almost two hour training. After training a jump in the pool, shower, hanging around few hours, eating and sleeping for 3 hours or so. And then the same all over again except the run is half the distance.

Actually I should be running 8km in the mornings and 5kms in the afternoon. I still haven’t mastered the skill of breathing properly in the heat so I stick to my shorter runs. The 8km run is also full with hills and it ends in a steep long hill one has to sprint up, run down, turn around and sprint up again. Definitely something I won’t be able to do for a long time. All respect to Chris and Jame who run it every single morning.

You wouldn’t believe how hard it feels to run every morning after hard training; just lifting my legs up feels almost impossible. The locals on the way make it a bit easier; children are always waving to me on their way to school, sometimes they even run with me for a while, and others passing my bike are giving me the thumbs up.

The training has been great too. After my slight injury in my right hip muscles, I haven’t been able to do proper kicks with my right leg. So now I have developed quite strong left abdominal muscles only kicking with the left. Both of my hips are fine now but now I’m trying to strengthen the right side as the left one is all muscle and the right leg has no power to kick the pads.

All the sleeping really helps with the training; I guess it works well as a short recovery between the training sessions. One night I didn’t sleep much though thanks to a big fat ass mouse in my room.  I woke up at 3am to find a mouse going through my food and running behind the fridge to hide. I hid all the food in to the fridge but the bugger just didn’t want to leave. I even went outside to look for a cat, there’s always plenty around, but couldn’t find any. So I had to sleep with the lights on.

There’s also more people here now for the training; almost ten people are training now simultaneously, gets a bit crowded in the ring. Feels nice to be a bit advanced in the training compared to the newbie’s; I felt quite strong holding down a girl much bigger than be during grabbling. I definitely need to learn more technique in boxing, my weakest point. One day as everyone’s punching bag was not fun at all.

One more day to go before the “holy Sunday”, the day off. Can’t wait to do nothing at all.

‘That’s it for now. I’m off for my afternoon run.