Can you hear the drums?

I can. My knees are back to talking with each other in bed in the morning, setting up an interesting rhythm sometimes. Mind you, these are normal sounds, nothing painful or out of the ordinary, but most certainly entertaining:

"Crick?" "Snick..."
"Pip?" "Pop!"
"Crock?" "Pip-crack-snick!!!!!"

As remarked on once by Black Belt Mama, I am most definitely in the Doldrums phase of recovery.

No huge exciting leaps of progress, though I am by many accounts far ahead of the typical person recovering from ACL reconstruction. I still attribute my accelerated recovery to rapid response to the injury more than anything else; I simply didn't have time to atrophy or cause collateral joint damage prior to surgery. We're talking almost exactly 1 month from injury to surgery here folks, and that's unusually short by so many accounts.

It's been colder than blazes since I was OK'ed to start power-walking in anticipation of running. I have no treadmill, so the only walking I've been doing is daily stuff around the office and shopping. I did put in a good dose this past Saturday, walking 6 or so blocks to the Karate school to video tape record belt promotion testing instead of driving. Felt absolutely fine afterwards.

This morning I had every intention of getting out and power-walking for 20 - 30 minutes, but alas I went to bed way too late last night and couldn't rouse myself in time.

You see, I was glued to Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows until just past 1 am when I finished the book.

So...as long as I get to bed at a decent hour tonight, I should be good to go for power walking tomorrow. My plan is to alternate walking (eventually running) with the usual squats, leg lifts with weights, and Sloooooooowwwww kicks--quite possibly my favorite Karate-related exercise.
Plenty of stretching will accompany all of this, along with getting around to doing push ups and some cool core muscle stuff with an exercise ball.

I got a treat last Wednesday night at G-Shaft's sparring class. With a tournament coming up, the instructors wanted to maximize ring time for the kids, so they called me out to referee a 3rd ring. I was nervous, having never really called points during sparring, but put on a confident face--and promptly forgot ALL the kids names! Things were just fine, though, and I held my own.

It was cute when the kids would make an exchange, but I either didn't see it clearly, or it wasn't clean enough technique to stop the match and call for a point. They would each stop and look at me to say something, and I'd remind them to keep on going until I called a halt. Do that in a tournament, and your opponent is likely to plant one square in your torso while your eyes are turned away, snagging an easy point.

Don't ever take your eyes off your opponent, kids!!!