Happy Birthday to Me
Failure is not the worst thing in the world. The very worst thing not to try.
Beyond a deluge of facebook comments, my birthday has been pretty uneventful. Unable to get into the high school wrestling room, Mike and I went for a 20 minute run down the backroads by his house. I haven’t been doing this type of longer conditioning work, so the last 10 minutes were pretty rough. I’ve always struggled with endurance running; the problem is that I get bored before I get fatigued. My new mp3 player, purchased dirt cheap at Meijer (without the “s”, god damnit), helped tremendously.
After running, we hit the heavy bag for a while. To be honest, it wasn’t that intense because was tried from running beforehand. Still, I got to work on my striking techniques.
Weight is 161 with sweatpants and a sweatshirt on, which isn’t bad. I tried calling the event organizer to see if I could find some information on my opponent, but only got voicemail.
Also, I’ve stopped mentioning it because it was starting to get redundant, but I’m still getting annoyed by the “you’re going to get your ass kicked” crowd that feels the need to inform me that I’m going to die in the cage. Friends, family, and people I barely know have all implied this in one form or another in the last week.
Seriously, I know I am going to get hit in the face. I know I am going to feel pain. I don’t expect to be able to just walk in there and demolish anybody that gets in my way. It’s a challenge, an attempt to learn more about myself and to improve my threshold for pain and risk. I know it’s going to be hard, but you can stop telling me about it. I want it to be hard.
For most people, the idea of something being difficult, painful, and worth must be impossible to fathom.
March 25, 2008 at 12:48 am
I had a similar thing to this the other day and thinking about it, it seems that it’s less like they want you to fail or get battered, and more like they think of you as ‘their friend’ who’s ‘a nice person’ that would never do that to someone (beat the snot out of someone in a fight). so they put 2 and 2 together and get 5!
Sometimes people outside the Martial Arts can’t grasp that you can fight with another person all out and then when it’s over go home as stronger friends or at least not enemies. Untrained people only get into fights through fear, doing it for fun and self improvement is alien to them.
Knife sharpens on stone;
Man sharpens on man.
A long perilous road tests the horse;
A long perilous journey tests the man.
Good luck!
March 25, 2008 at 9:16 pm
When I told my parents I wanted to do MMA they freaked and ever since than I’ve been told “damn dude you would get your ass kicked.” I don’t think they realize I would be fighting guys my own size and not Chuck Liddel Jr.. but that’s what they think. Keep at it man. I’m definantly interested in how the fight goes for you. We seem to be a lot alike except for the fact that you have started competition. Best of luck!