Great Alaska Martial Arts Festival & Tournament

On Saturday June 21st I participated in the Second Annual Great Alaska Martial Arts Festival & Tournament at the UAA sports center. Chung's Tae Kwon Do Alaska had a very good showing by percentage. All of the participants over the age of seven won first place in their sparring competition. The youth took first place in poomse (forms) while we old guys took second place in our poomse divisions.

I really wish I could post the sparring video, but I haven't been able to get a copy myself. I was a lot better matched this time. My opponent was probably five years older than me and fifty pounds lighter, but we were rather evenly matched in skill and speed. Since it is light contact and not death-match, my bigger size actually goes against me.

In the picture from left to right are Conner, Evan, Alex, me, Master Ron, and Caitlin. Evan is the brown belt that I always have to spar for my belt tests. His son Conner is up for the summer and his other boy Alex is in the little kids class. Caitlin is own of the three teenagers who add chatter to our workouts.

Taekwondo Belt Test

After the parade I had to run over to my Do Jang for my belt test. I earned my high-green belt (which is considered the highest "beginner"rank).

The kids get upset at me when I compare my Taekwondo ranks to their Karate ranks since the two schools have different philosophies on earning rank and therefore have different frequencies in the testing cycle (I can test every two to three months whereas they test two to three times per year).

I thought I'd finally get some video of me in action on this blog. The girl filming this didn't frame the shot well enough for you to see what I'm doing to break the board. It is a step-behind side-kick.

I'm going to tournament tomorrow, so I may have some humiliating story to add next week with regards to my sparring or poomse (forms) competitions.

Colony Days Parade

Sheila, Christopher, Alanna and Megan participated in the Colony days parade with their Karate club. Christopher, McKabe and another boy were taking turns kicking and punching the "mountain" while Alanna, Megan and a few other young students sat on the float.

Sheila passed out fliers for the club and candy. The black and brown belts from the club did demonstrations as the walked along.

Commenting

Due to criticisms by certain people (you know who you are), I have opened up commenting to anonymous users. Moderation is still enabled.

Bear Trackers

Since Monday I have been going to a day camp. The only kids at this camp are some of the smartest kids in the school district, and so it was very fun. We went hiking for the first three days, and the last two days were spent working on our movies that we had been making. In my movie all I do is laugh and make dumb comments (my friend did all the acting), but I also did all the editing. Here it is.


We don't know why we put the critic in there. it was a bit random. Also, sorry about the bad video quality. Google Video doesn't support DV files, so I had to make it an MOV.

Menard Memorial Run

Sheila talked the family into doing a 5k run/walk on Saturday. I was hoping she would comment on it. But I guess it is up to me. :)

Kudos to Grandma Lula who came in first place in the 60-69 year old bracket and to Alanna who came in second place in the 9 year old bracket (she actually completed the race before all the rest of us).

So, I did pathetically little in the way of training...maybe three or four one mile jogs (that were partly walks). To make matters worse, I needed to use the restroom when the race started. Realizing that I was not a contender anyway, I waited for the port-o-potty to be freed up before I started running. Upon exiting the john, I came to realize that I was going to have to do some serious jogging to pass up the the mother with two toddlers in a stroller and a baby in a back carrier.

To protect me pride, I started jogging (I'd originally planned on just doing a fast walk). After about three minutes I'd past the grannies & mothers with strollers who were just walking. I could see my mom about 200 yards ahead of me pushing Matthew in a stroller. I tried to speed up, but my conditioning was pathetic--my burst of speed turned into a walk as I sucked air.

I decided that if I was going to make any gains on my family, I was going to have to take baby-steps. I picked some girls who were being encouraged by a person running backwards. It took a few minutes but I passed them.

Next baby-step was a lady pushing a stroller...this proved more difficult than I thought. She was actually going just slightly slower than my pace...but she wasn't having walk periodically to catch her breathe. I'd close the gap, then I'd lose ground as I switched to walking. I didn't pass her to almost the mid-point.

At the mid-point I finally caught up with Sheila, Christopher and Ben Rindlesbacher. Sheila and I passed the boys. We stayed together for a few minutes, but my hip was hurting at this point and I gave up any pretense of jogging. Sheila started jogging again and I wouldn't see her again until I'd passed the finish line.

My moment of humiliation came when the geriatric express (four or five gray-haired people) came running up and passed me. Oh the shame. It was fun doing this with the whole family. I'll just make sure I train a little better...and void my bladder well before they sound the starting horn.

EDIT By Christopher

Ben, Alanna, and I got to the starting line fast, so a few seconds after the race started we were all in the top ten. After about 2 hours minutes Alanna shot ahead and was not seen until the end. A while later we had decided that as long as we beat the old men we were fine. Within the mext 5 minutes we were passed by50 3 old guys. we were ahead of the rest of our families (-Alanna) for about half the race.

~Christopher