15 minutes

It was slightly better this week with me rushing home from work at 3.45pm for my bogu, arriving the QEII Stadium at 6.15pm. Funny enough the female changed room was rather busy when I get in. Apparently there is this Interschool Fencing Tournament going on at the main arena, and the changing area was pretty much occupied by school girls.

That reminds me of this Chinese-intercity competition (whats the official title) the next weekend. Obviously I am not on any of the team due to my poor attendance at the squad, but I'd have to go and help out or keiko at least. (Though I would rather spend the day sleeping after 6 days of work -_-)

Rarely in my home dojo would they do anything rather than "Kihon" - but when I got in there people were already at those tiring rounds of kirikaeshi-up-and-down-the-dojo-till-sensei-says-yame. Being singled out I just had the chance for mitori keiko. Kinda wonder how many rounds can I last these days, feeling so physically unfit.

After that the adult group merged with the kids class which usually occupies the other half of the dojo. It was in fact 8 rounds of uchikomi keiko for the kids side only. I haven't seen this stuff for a while and its quite refreshing to watch, especially most of them are 12-15 years younger than I am.

This was followed by enjin-keiko (one person in the centre of the circle, fighting everybody else). Still the kid was in the centre being battered by the adults. Outside the game observing, I really would say the key for this exercise is mainly to build up self-motivation and endurance, while techniques come second.

So by the time Eda-sensei said jikeiko for the adults group, it was already very close to 7pm. I had quite good keiko with Lisa, Andy Ng (kohai from the squad who is visiting with his kid) and Mrs Horibe. I got some relatively satisfying kote-mena nd hiki-men on everyone, but somehow lost quite a lot of de-kote. It's either I am too slow or not hittinf spot-on. It's very strange that I used to be able to fire one tobikomi-kote whenever I wanted to, but now it's just so closed to non-existance.

The last and very short keiko was taking 3 cuts from David the interpretor who happened to time his jodan men quite well. None of this should happen again when I practice more often...!!!

Oh, and I finally paid the dues for this season to Eda-sensei. She said Kishikawa-sensei was asking where me and Angus are. So I guess I am not the only one getting sick in a month and too busy in another. It'll be really interesting next week when I see Kishikawa-sensei and the rest of those in the squad.