Successful weekend

As I write this the rain is 'fair stotting' down - bit of a change from the stunning summer weather over the weekend! It was fab to see such great weather but it was perhaps not entirely ideal for the Edinburgh marathon on Sunday. Sadly one relay runner collapsed and died and lots more were unable to finish. A colleague was running his first marathon and although he finished with what I reckon was an excellent time, he missed his targetted finish time due to keeling over with cramp at mile 24.

On the positive side, T'Other Half PB'd his 5k at the Edinburgh Park Run despite the heat on Saturday morning. This time he came in at a very respectable 27 min 20 sec.

At 6ft 2in (and most of that being leg lol) he should be a good runner!

His Park Run meant there was a bit of a queue for the car on Saturday morning! Basically as soon as he got out, I jumped in and zoomed off to the Combat Ready gym for the mop-up krav maga grading.

I confess that I actually dithered about even going along for the grading right the way up until I got in the car! I was reasonably confident about the material but I wasn't so sure if my overall fitness levels were up to the demands of the 3 hour session, especially in the heat. Because of the other things going on in my life just now, I feel my training has been much more sporadic than is usual for me. I was also not sure whether or not the hurty bits were going to let me down. Once I got there and we got going with a bit of skipping, my brain flipped over into Let's get it ON mode and I was fine.

Once we'd warmed up (oh the irony ....) and stretched off we headed straight into the seminar part of the session, reviewing the material we were going to need later.

We covered:

• getting up from the ground
• striking combinations on the pads
• releases from front, side and rear chokes, headlocks and chokes on the ground

We also looked at:

• front 'stomp' kicks
• back kicks

Once we covered the relevant material we took a short break to re-hydrate then it was into the grading proper. We started off with the fitness test, which covered a combination of kettlebell and bodyweight drills.

We were then tested on a variety of padwork combinations and 'situationals'. Of those, one of the toughest had to be repping out 10 burpees to your partner's count. When you came back up from the tenth you had to defend a slashing knife attack! That was slightly challenging for the old cardio-vascular system!

We then spent some time 'slow fighting' and working all of striking and defensive tools. I actually really enjoyed this bit, although it was a challenge not to speed up! Clearly I still really love to fight lol.

We finished off with getting up from the ground quickly and safely, then they totally finished us off with one last physical test! The gym floor is covered with alternately colooured jigsaw mats. 10 of these were measured out and you had to jump into the first and do 1 press up, into th second and do 2 press ups etc, all the way up to 10. On the way back it was jump and 1 squat, all the way up to 10.

Then we were done! Literally :=) Quite honestly, my tshirt could have walked home on its own ....

But we all passed! Which was fab. We all worked so hard, and I think it's something we all really earned. Hope it's not so hot next time.