World Championships Aruba - Pre fight

I arrived in Aruba Monday afternoon, a whole day later than was scheduled. After missing my connecting flight I was inevitably forced to stay for an additional 15Hrs in L.A. I have a new appreciation for patience now despite being in transit for over 48hour's! And who am I to complain when a team like Mongolia took three days to arrive. Ah Aruba, it's starting off as a love / hate relationship. Love the place, hate getting there. So exhausted, sleeping was easy Monday night. I practically passed out even though my body clock was all messed up.

Tuesday, I was eager train. I had a lot of time to think while in transit about every minute of every day leading up to and including the competition. In fact that's all you do is think about the competition. I've been asked what do I think about Aruba? Well until this morning I have hardly taken notice. Haven't given myself that luxury yet. Master Park (5th Dan Korean Champion from the prestigious "Kyunghee University" and who is a great guy and good friend of mine now) and I agreed to train at 10am for around 45 minutes. The reasoning behind this:
1. Flush the lungs / heart out after being in transit for so long.
2. Acclimatise to the heat and humidity.
3. Prepare the body so it is comfortable warming up / competing at 10am local time (which is 1am at home).

To give you an idea of the climate think northern Queensland, 30 degrees at 75% humidity. It's fair to say that during that light 45 minute session I felt like throwing up, was dizzy and thought I was going to suffocate. Clearly I should have done more training in the sauna! Jin told me to take it easy, we finished the session and I did my recovery in the 22C air conditioned motel room on my bed! Much better.

The rest of the day was typically spent trying to gather all the info for the comp, ie registration, weigh in, doctor inspection etc of which most people we asked either had no idea or were wrong. It made for a long day and I was glad to have another early night. It was however funny to hear the WTF rep ask Jin what division he's fighting in. I think it made him even more eager to compete.

Wednesdays training session we followed the same 45m routine and I felt a huge improvement on the previous day. We then hit the pool for a recovery session, the water being absolutely perfect!















Weigh in was after lunch and I can tell you I had absolutely no concerns about eating, at 70.5kg I could of had 10 lunches and still been under! Throughout the course of the day my thoughts would continuously drift to the competition. Feeling nervous and having doubts I asked Jin about his experiences. He said it's normal for every athlete to be a little nervous, it's just important to know when to focus and try to quickly overcome this when the match begins. Thankfully that night I was still exhausted and fell asleep without any hastle.