Wednesday, November 10, 2010

Denouement

It was a tough weekend but we made it!


First and foremost, I can't say how proud I am of my daughter. She spent the entire week before the test with a case of nausea. If it was from nerves or from a virus, I honestly don't know. We played it safe and kept her home from school most of the week to make sure she was going to be ready. She did have nausea every day so it's not like we were going completely overboard. The consequences of not being able to test were too severe for us to make any other decision. She would have had to do the 16 week physical program all over again and wait 6 months for the next test. When it came time for the actual test, she still wasn't completely up to snuff but put out her best effort. I have to admit that I shed a few tears when she got her belt.

It's hard to describe the magnitude of the test without actually being there.  Here's a youtube playlist with samples of different parts of the test:



If it's not obvious, my daughter is the blond haired girl in the blue uniform and I'm the tall guy in the black uniform.  The actual test curriculum that the potential black belts performed consisted of:

  • 4 Taeguek forms, each one performed twice
  • 16 Kicking combinations
  • 15 escrima patterns
  • 5 one step sparring
  • 3 sparring rounds
  • 12 timed kicking techniques (1 minute each)
  • 1/2 hour workout
  • 5 board breaks
  • 45 minutes of running
  • 1 hour of meditation
  • Having a great attitude ;)

That was topped off with the demonstrations we did during the belt ceremony.

Overall, I feel that both of us did pretty well.  I obviously wasn't watching her while I was performing but we have a lot of video footage that I've looked at of her performing her curriculum and it looks pretty clean.

The part of the test that I was stressing about the most was the afternoon kicking techniques. They ran it differently this year where we got a break between each kicking technique that we were supposed to perform. I had gassed up on gatorade g1 and had a bottle of g2 sitting on the sidelines. It turned out to be a lot easier than six months ago in our cho dan bo test. The kicking techniques were also a bit chaotic as everyone was going at their own speed and direction but otherwise were pretty straightforward.

The most difficult part of the test was the running on the second day. Normally, my daughter and I run for two miles and then stop. This takes us on the order of 20 minutes. The running portion of the test was actually a timed run for 45 minutes. We both slowed down from our normal pace.  My daughter had a hard time keeping going about half way through with a wave of nausea coming over her again. She persevered and was able to maintain at least a slow jog the rest of the way.

It's been a long time coming. It still feels surreal as I write this several days after the event. We've had several people tell us congratulations. Everyone is sincere but every once in a while, one of the congratulatory remarks seems to come with a bit more meaning like the person really understands the level of effort it took to get here. I appreciate everyone's kind words but it is those comments that I appreciate the most.

1 comment:

Chris said...

Congrats to you Doug and your daughter! That was the culmination of a lot of hard work. Very cool, and way to go!