Friday

Friday morning started off great.  I woke up, got dressed, felt no pain, and decided to follow my mates on a training run.  The run is really nice at this gym.  Once you exit the driveway you make a left, walk a minute or two, and then take another left.  You pass through an alley, over a bridge, and then you make a right.  Once there the run begins.

On this particular road there is not much traffic.  You can just run straight for either time or distance.  The advance fighters run for distance, I run for time.  I set up my timer for 30 minutes and once the 30 minutes is up I head back since that's probably what it's going to take me to get back to the gym.

Once I started going my body started warming up to it.  Before long I run into World Champion Goom, and a few minutes later Hannah and Sam are on their way back. Once the 30 minutes was over I started heading back.  I make it back for morning training.

For the morning session I'm paired with Goom again to the dislike of Rashella.  As a matter of fact after the first round Rashella walks up to me and jokingly tells me she dislikes the fact that I stole her man.  The Aussies over here find Goom gorgeous.  Again, it never ceases to amaze me.  Every year that I come out here there's a girl that falls in love with her trainer.

I ignore Rashella and get to business of getting my training done.  After working with Goom, I hit the bag, and then some more conditioning work with my kicks.  Myself, Sam, and Oliver had to kick the bag with each leg at about 100 times.  It was a rotation with Sam holding the bag and then I would kick with my right leg and Oliver with his left.  We would alternate for about 20 kicks and then switch the rotation.  My conditioning was fine but my groin on the left side started aching.  Sam was fine but Oliver was having a hard time.  All three of us finished without incident but Oliver looked spent.

After the conditioning exercises I showed up, rested up in my room, and headed off to breakfast.  Again it was of the traditional variety.  After I was done I went back to my room to sleep.  My body wasn't aching and resting up and skipping the Thursday session did the trick.

For the afternoon session we had to skip rope for 30 minutes in the Thailand heat.  The normal suspects were present but apparently Oliver went to sleep after breakfast and never woke up.  For the record he did wake up....right before dinner at 6 pm.

Again I was paired with Goom and again I got Rashella's wrath.  It's not my fault, I never choose my trainers, my trainers choose me.  It's of the same variety but because it's the end of the week it's the traditional routine.  I was finished before 5 pm and after showering it was time for dinner.

Over dinner it was discovered that Jeremy from France and Rafael from Brazil both left without saying a word.  Totally Ninja if you ask me.  No one, other than the camp's owners, knew they were gone.  They just left without saying goodbye.  For the record, I always leave saying goodbye to my training partners, trainers, and the camp owner for taking care of me.

After dinner I luckily found out that we have a washing machine.  It's only 30 baht a load (slightly less than $1 US) and it saves me tons as opposed to going to a laundrymat.

I finish up my one load of laundry and call it a night.