The Plans, They Are A'Changing

It's so hard to step away from a dream once you start down the path to fulfilling it. The longer and the farther you go down that road, the more difficult it is to divert onto another. Yet I know from experience that just because you must take another path right now doesn't mean that you can't revisit your goals in the future. Sometimes it's better to postpone what you once thought was immediate and come back to it when the time is right.

That's the conclusion I've come to this week with my goal to test for my black belt in June. It's just not going to happen. My arm is actually healing up very nicely, but it's nowhere near the point where I can even straighten it without pain, let alone move it in a fast or aggressive manner. And if I even think about someone else touching it, I cringe. So I'm not going to be making it to any of the intense brown belt/black belt classes any time soon, not going to be doing any two-person contact at all, and I don't know how long it will be before I can even throw a proper punch or block.

Although it's probably been painfully obvious to others that this wasn't going to happen, I was stubbornly sticking to the plan for awhile. But now I know it will just have to wait. The upside is that by the time I do test I should be extremely well prepared. Also, my son is excited that perhaps we will test together, since he has a year to go until he would be ready. I don't know yet if it will take me that long or if I'll wait for him and test together or what.

On the plus side of things, I've been able to run now totally pain-free, and even did a semi-long run today of 8 miles without the arm hurting at all. I also swam on Saturday!!!! 1000 yards of swimming and 1000 yards of kicking. The swimming is ridiculous, I look like a wounded albatross flapping my way through the water, but I'm ecstatic that I can do it at all, and it doesn't hurt. I think it will help my arm rehab too, as long as I don't push it.