:o

Or however you make that "eek" face.

Had one of those moments last night at karate. On Thursdays, we have a brown and black belt only class (followed by an all belt adult class, hence my two Thursday classes). As it happened last night, when class started, there were only three of us there, VERY oddly, all three of the brown belt three stripes, a.k.a., black belt candidates. Because I was out for a while, the other two candidates jumped a bit ahead of me (we've progressed through the ranks together and should have all tested together, but I wound up testing several months behind them). Well, last night sensei hinted that what he would really like is for all of us to test for shodan together. I'm not entirely sure that will fly with the head (NY) sensei, but it wouldn't surprise me one bit. Which means I would test this fall, whereas I had expected that I'd be testing next spring. So, :o

I don't really know what to make of this. I can prep in time, I'm sure, but I hadn't been planning to get that super-intense about training until around the new year (I expected to be testing next March or April - and for all I know that may be what happens). However if it is to be this fall, I can pretty much scrap my sorta plan to do an ultra (50K) in January - and yes, I already have a training schedule mapped out; doing it is contingent on training for the half going injury-free. Which is fine with me; I'd rather go at an ultra full tilt, so if THIS is the way things are to be, I can reorient my thinking to a 24 hour race next summer (goal would be 50 miles).

Got whiplash? Good, because I do, too.

I've also taken a second look at the NROL (original) fat loss program, which I was thinking about using for my strength training during the half prep. I'm probably going to have to mod it a bit more than originally planned. Each of the first two stages contain three supersets, with three sets of each exercise. Looking at the sets/reps/rest scheme, I figure as written the workouts will take the better part of an hour, and that's too long. Likely I will drop to two sets of each exercise so I can keep it under 40 minutes total. I'll also mod the ab work because as written it's too easy. There's a lot of heavy leg work in these workouts, and that really doesn't thrill me, but we'll see how it goes. It's always nice to drop legwork at some point in a running plan - it's like getting a turbo charger.

Ah well. Off to the gym...