Black Belt Testing - Power Weekend

This is power weekend. Tonight was testing on kata, kicks, and board breaking.

Support team. First of all, thanks to Carmen who has been so great.

Carmen is very pleased about me getting thru the Black Belt cycle and having some control over my schedule again.

Kyoshi ran the class. Between that and having all the other sensei in attendence, this makes for a very exciting night!

We had all the schools from South Florida in to the National Training Center tonight.

Here is the team that I've been in cycle with....(minus Edgar and Mr L and Mr Mike Sweeny and Miss Tammy and Janine (sp?))

Kathy, Agnes, Jennifer, Pat, John (me), Coach, Jay, and Scott.

A few words about this team and what it shows. I think about half of the new black belts are kids (not pictured or counted here) and the other half are adults. I think that's typical of the Lavallee system. There are also an even number of men and women (As an aside, I just consulted the official Lavallee website and counted 11 schools, 3 led by female sensei!). Our team was noted for good cardio in that all of us qualified with some ease for the 16 minute 2 mile run and in fact, most of us finished in the 14-15 minute spot (with Kathy & Agnes clocking in near 13 minutes). And we're not spring chickens. At 49, I'm the median age of this group.

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Tonight was alot of kicking, partner drills, a few kata, and board breaking.

Did I mention that there was alot of kicking? It was intense. Really fun. The performance level was high.

And while I would like to write more about tonight, I think I'd better go soak in epson salts, eat alot of pasta, and get ready for some Bugo Kumite along with a few miles of running early Saturday (tomorrow) morning.