Feel the FIRE

Today was pretty good.  I spent the bulk of the day working and just taking care of general life tasks.  I met up with my group for my Islamic Studies project, who seem pretty chill and everything, but given that I'm taking the class Pass/Fail, are waaaaaay too serious about it for my liking.  We have a thousand words due by the end of the 7th week of class, and it is currently the 3rd week, and we are already meeting.  Arg.  It's just one more thing to add to my constantly growing list of things to take care of.  I feel like my to-do list in Melbourne gets longer every day, and I am never going to be able to finish it.

The city is so amazing and there is so much to do, and I feel like I've barely put a dent in it :(  Though Stathi offered to take me and some friends around tomorrow just on a driving tour of the city so we'll at least get to SEE a bunch of it, even if we never get around to going....

I later got prepped for practice and was so excited to break in my new uniform.  That was until I felt how stiff it was.  The collar was so rigid that it nearly made me submit during certain pins just because of how it was oriented on my neck.  >.<  Carmen has officially turned the heat on the people who are competing.  Practice today was SO hard, and the fact that I'm horribly out of shape after my week off didn't help.  I thought I was going to die.  Though the fact that I drank WAY too much water before warmup didn't help.  My tummy was not a happy camper.

I felt better near the end of practice and my energy picked back up, though technically, it was a bad practice for me.  I got submitted WAY more than I would like, since I need to be able to fend off attacks decently if I don't want my tournament fight to get cut dramatically short :(  The way Carmen was talking about the tournament was really inspiring, and her excitement about it is really contagious.  She really thinks I have a shot of doing fairly well, so that feels good.  She is going to work through a game-plan with me next practice, so that's gonna help my strategy a lot.  I'm learning more and more what my strengths are and how to use them, and how to be more dynamic as a fighter :)

Tonight's practice left me feeling really really energized and excited about the tournament as a whole.  I feel like I've got a whole new fire in me about training, and I really want to push myself hard to get in good shape for this tournament.  Getting up for a run tomorrow morning, so my heart is in for a shock.  I haven't done cardio in so long, what with the lack of TKD, so this'll be interesting....