The half way point! I've climbed the hill and now its downhill to the finish line! I feel like this is a big psychological win actually. And once again, I'm feeling sanguine about adopting this sprint methodology to health, weight loss and training. Today I took a morning sparring class. It was just the coach and I in the ring. Sparring is another level in terms of effort requirements. I think I'm getting fit when hitting bags and mitts, but adding a person actively avoiding my punches and hitting me back adds a whole new dimension to things. My coach has had many armature and professional fights with an excellent record. We're not anywhere near each other in abilities and I'm fairly confident he could knock me out without a lot of effort. I guess its a sign of a good boxing coach that can dial back his effort to match a students ability. He had me juggle, or try to juggle tennis balls before we started. This is to try and engage the mind and hands and my reactions. I won't be taking my juggling show on the road any time soon. We sparred for 6 2 minute rounds with a 30 second rest in between. Masters boxing will be 3 x 2 minute rounds with a minute rest, so getting used to 30 seconds makes a lot of sense. I plan on being the fittest version I can be when I step into the ring in November. The rounds themselves were all hard, but if I'm looking at the positives, much better than the last time I sparred with him. I'm still tense, and I'm still getting exhausted by the later rounds, but I am thinking more. I avoided more shots than last time as I was calmer and could see things coming. A little bit of strategy was coming into my game; I was actively working angles and trying to cut the ring off by reacting to where he moved. I landed a lot more shots today, but nothing felt all that good, just seemed like glancing blows, but thats probably more him making me miss than me not knowing how to throw. In summary, I still felt like a beginner, but less of a beginner than the last time I sparred with him! I stayed for the next class at 10am. This seemed easy after sparring; some weights to warm up, mitt work and abs. A solid 90 minutes of boxing training and a great way to start the weekend. I didn't have time to eat after training as I needed to get my son to basketball. I grabbed a banana on the way out to top up the glycogen tank. I've learnt that if I don't eat some carbs very soon after exercising, then I'm at risk of my body eating muscle for fuel. This was a big paradigm shift for me. Historically I'd train and not eat for hours afterwards. Now, I'll try time my big meal almost immedately after working out. I'd run myself late today, so i couldn't eat normally, a banana would have to suffice. About 15 mintes into my boys basketball game and I was ready to eat my arm off I was so hungry. I got my lunch of steak, slaw and rice at around 1pm. I ate a lot of slaw and rice here which filled me up with not a lot of extra calories. I had a small nap and spent the rest of the afternoon doing work around the house incidentally clocking up an extra 3 - 5k steps for the day (I'm guess as I didn't have my phone with me). I had a quick swim, a late evening dog walk after my dinner (Salmon and salad) to clock up just under 15k official steps. This was a pretty active day and it caught up on me by 10pm and I was asleep by 10:30 on Saturday night - party on!