Sorry a Day Late

There are moments in your life that you will always remember like it was yesterday. Like the first time you rode a bike, or the first time you got into a fight, or even the first time you were kissed. The First day of Torture Camp is always a day you remember clearly. It is usually one of the hardest days because you are trying to figure out what is what and where you fit in. There are always new faces and students that are trying to prove something. These are the students you want to try to avoid, the Camp is all about pacing yourself and staying healthy.

The 1st day was a little anti climatic for the new recruits because I woke up with pink eye and had to go to the Hospital. It was probably a good thing because Karl’s plane was late and we didn’t get in till 2am. When I woke up and realized that all that itching and Visine did not help I told the recruits we would not be making the morning session so go back to sleep. I would rather have them fresh the rest of the week than training for 14 hours a day and worrying about sleep.

The Hospital was a pretty cool place, the staff was really friendly and helpful. They had all kinds of questions when they found out I was not from their town. One of the questions was why I was in their town ( Longview ,WA) I told them is was their for a Thai Boxing camp. One of the Nurses said “ Oh yeah my daughter does that stuff!” I was really surprised and intrigued so I asked “Where does she train and how long has she been doing it?” She looked at me like I was dumb and said” She trains at her house and I am not sure how long she has been doing it, she got the tapes a few years ago. I am not sure how much she does it anymore but she used to talk about it all the time! Is the Black Guy from the T.V. going to be here? ” I finally figured out that she was talking about Tae Bo. I started to tell her it was not the same thing I did but then I realized it would be a losing battle so I stopped.

We ended up getting out to camp in time for the afternoon session which started with –
A 2 hour boxing session with Leonard Trigg. Followed up by 3 hours of Thai Pads, Shadow Boxing, Timing Sparing, Clinch work with Greg Nelson and Heavy Bag rounds. The groups are always split up in two with the fighters in one and everyone else in the other. Master Chai makes it harder for the fighter group so after the 5 hour workout the fighters had to do more rounds with the man in the middle. This is a clinch drill where there are 4 guys with 1 in the middle every time the whistle blows the next guy jumps on the guy in the middle. This last for 3 minutes then the next guy goes in. The drill was followed by some calestnics , all this lasted for another hour. So the afternoon training session was about 6 hour long.

On the way home all I kept hearing was how awesome this experience is. The trees, the instructors, the food, the drills… We ended up getting back by 1130 pm and ended up in bed by 1230 with a 5 am wake up call. Stay tuned for tomorrows report.