Claudio, being a competitive boxer, turned out to be a really good boxing trainer. He invited me to his boxing gym for a workout on Wednesday, which was a holiday for me. We started out with a jumprope warmup. Altho I killed in jumping rope in third grade, turns out it is TOTALLY not the same thing when there’s not two other girls turning giant ropes on either side of me chanting rhymes about double-dutch buses. Granted, this individual rope is long for me, but I don’t think I kept up the skipping for more than 5 seconds at a time. At one point I managed to knock the bobby pin right out of my hair and it flew across the floor (the pin, not my hair). Claudio finally got exasperated enough to say, without missing a beat in his own skipping, “Lose the rope! Just throw it away! Every time you stop you’re wasting cardio time. Just PRETEND you’re jumproping without the rope.” I was really good at THAT, and it saved Claudio from having to explain to other boxers how his friend here managed to hogtie herself with a jumprope.

After that, he put on target mits and called out combination punches to me to check my technique. I hadn’t really done much boxing since college when I fooled around with recreational kickboxing. Plus, the very different punch, block, and stance forms from my jujitsu practices got me kinda turned around. After some adjustments on my motions, he had me go through various combination drills. It seemed like a blur of motion and gasping after that. I know we hit the punching bag and a couple of other practice punching targets, one mounted on a wall and another on a tight rope, and just when I thought we surely must almost be done with our workout, he forced me into a boxing ring to spar with him. “WHAT?!” I remember saying incredulously. He promised he would only block and not hit me back, and we went a few full rounds. I was still struggling with breathing problems as my runny nose and coughing overtook me a few times (and my Kleenex was in my workout bag downstairs), and I’ve had to tell him “no” more than once when he pushed me to keep going, as I insisted I had to have a water break or had to go blow my nose. One time after a few consecutive rounds of sparring in the ring, I felt like I was at the edge of consciousness from exertion and exhaustion as boxing is incredibly cardio-intensive, and I heard the bell ding (“Thank GAWD!”). Claudio said, “That’s the 30-second bell. Keep going.” I wanted to punch his lights out but I couldn’t lift my arm anymore. And then we finished up with a gazillion crunches and pushups. At least he treated me to lunch at House of Blues after that. =P

The next day, Thursday, I woke up feeling like I had been run over by a truck. My right wrist and hand, especially, were sore, weak, and the knuckles a bit swollen. At work, I had trouble typing as I didn’t have full control over my right fingers, especially when I had to turn my hand up at the wrist to get in proper position for the keyboard. Claudio and I exchanged texts as I described my motor impediments. He told me I need to go back to the boxing gym and “beat them fingers until they act right.” Then later, I wondered if I ought to skip the gym at lunch, given how sore I already was. Claudio texted, “Go to the gym! Seriously. Go! Do light work tho.” So I went. On the drive home from work, I had already made an appointment with Kaiser for 7pm (see previous post), and Claudio and I exchanged a couple more texts.
Claudio: “Wait until you get your cardio up. We will be able to have a boxing workout and not just the boxing warm up! Lol!”
Me: “That was just the boxing warmup? *discouraged*”
Claudio: “Ha ha ha. I was kiiiiiiiiiiidding. :)”
Me: “*crying* No you weren’t!”
Claudio: “Maaaaybe I was a teeny itsy bit serious.”
Hmmph!!
Me: “I know you were. I have so far to go. But at least I didn’t totally forget all my boxing stuff. Just 90% of it. You have your work cut out for you! Muahaha…”
Claudio: “Bring it.”
Me: “Maybe one day…if I’m a very good girl and I train very hard…I can beat Dwaine up.”

I thought I’d get back at him for his ruthless tyranny at pushing me, so later, I played my one and only April Fool’s joke this year. At Kaiser, I texted him.
Me: “So guess what. I’m at Kaiser right now.”
Claudio: “Y u at kaiser?????”
Me: [after some time went by and I had gotten home] “Well, I was. Now I’m home.”
Claudio: “Whaaaaaaaaaaaaaat?”
Me: “Know how my right wrist was weird and hence I couldn’t control my fingers or type right? Hairline fracture.”
Claudio: “When did you do that? On the heavy bag?”
Me: “It swelled up like crazy after gymming at lunch, despite the light workout. I probably aggravated it by gymming. =P” I stopped short of saying, “This is all your fault!” Haha!
Claudio: “Sowy to hear it. 🙁 So when r u coming down for boxing again??? =P”
Me: “April fool. I went to Kaiser to see why I wasn’t kicking this hacking mucus thing. Turns out, not allergies, sinus infection. Came back with antibiotics & codeine.”
Claudio: “U r in for a whole lotta hurting next time we box!”

Oops.