TurboNurse

Today was my first tae kwon do tournament in over 20 years. It was a small mini-tournament that was hosted by the guy who runs the school I go to.

All in all it turned out very well.

I started my day off at about 6am to be at a run at about 7:20 or so. It's really hard waking up that early when you body is used to sleeping in until 11-noon. My internal clock has been so messed up since I graudated.

Anyhow, the run this morning went well. I did 3:1 intervals for 3 miles in the crazy cold wind. Yes! It was COLD this morning!!!!!!

I left early from there to come home and get ready for the tournament. It was so hard to not lay down and go to sleep. I seemed to manage somehow.

I get to the tournament early and they are running behind with the little-bitties (little kids) so we got a late start.

First off was patterns. I thought it was going to be breaking so I was warming up for breaking. Oops!

The pattern I chose to do is called Dan Gun (you can search for videos on youtube if you really want to see the form/pattern). I rocked it! So then I did it again because I advanced to the second round. Rocked it again!!! I make it to the third round and decide to pull out the ol Chon Ji (again, you can youtube this) and totally F'd it up in ways I didn't think I could.

I know all of my patterns very well but because I was nervous about being judged and tired as heck, I ended up coming up with my own hybrid version of Dan Gun and Chon Ji. CRAP! I totally threw any hope I had of placing with that. I did mange to make it three rounds though so I'm very happy with that.

I absolutely rocked the power breaking to make up for forms/patterns.

The first break we were to do is a hammer fist breaking two boards. I was super nervous about this one because I had never broken two boards before. Even in practice I was only doing one at a time. Thanks to a good adrenaline rush, I managed to easily break the two boards no problem! Whew!! Score for me!

The second break was a side push kick which is a pretty powerful kick. I had to break three boards and managed to do so on the frist try with no problem at all! The people behind me had problems with it but the were also half my age so I give them props for going for it!

So the end result of the day was:

one 3 mile run
FIRST place in power breaking
making round three in patterns.

After the tournament I met some friends for a drink and a super late lunch/early dinner. Yummy yummy portabello burger in my tummy!