Blue Belt

6/17
Tested for and passed my blue belt.  WOW!  I was sick on Thursday to the point where I had to stay home from work and try to sleep.  Friday morning I woke up feeling a little less congested, but still sick.  I thought it would be a great idea to take DayQuil.  NO. 

I assumed we'd do a little extra cardio and then get the techniques under way.  NO.

We started off with running. No problem. Jumping jacks. Fine.  Suicides. Sure.  Suicides with pushups at each line.  Easy.  Then we started doing mountain climbers.  More pushups.  Holding the plank position.  Crunches.  I would have been ok at this point (winded of course, but ok), except that I couldn't breathe.  Could. Not. Breathe.  Couldn't catch my breath.  It was terrible.  I can work through fatigue, but not being able to take a breath is another matter.  Felt like I had asthma.  More cardio.  More cardio.  Wide-stance squats into short stance squats.  Holding the horse position.  I was in trouble. 

Cardio finally over, we go right into techniques.  I'm huffing, and in trouble.  I'm doing the techniques, but a littled panicked about the whole not being able to take a full breath thing.  I keep going, hoping that I'll get it, but without much of a break (we did have a short water break every 10min or so) I never did.  It wasn't until we were about halfway through the 88 techniques that I finally stopped gasping.  Threw in some more cardio every so often just make sure we were working from muscle memory.  Any techniques that required me to stand up made me sad.  Techniques that started off with me under side control also made me sad. 

In any case, we got through the techniques...and then did some rolling.  Probably 4-5 minute rounds, and I had 4 guys.  My last roll was pretty bad...I was pretty much balled up in side control with stomach cramps.  Ugh.  Terrible way to finish.

However, I did earn my blue belt! 

Later, in the car, I felt a bit sick.  In fact, I didn't feel right until 24hrs later.  I was exhausted that night.  Test ended at 4:30pm.  Went for some food around 6pm, and ate in little tiny bites.  Pretty miserable.  Two days later I still have the cold or whatever ick I caught last week.  Not as bad, and probably (hopefully) won't feel as bad as I did on Friday night for quite some time.  I think the DayQuil really screwed up my stomach and I would have been a lot better without it.  I really didn't want to drip crap on my partner(s) though!  Lesson learned.