Well, here I sit at 4pm with a hot coffee on a cold and blustery February afternoon contemplating life the universe and everything. Well ok, maybe not life the universe and everything.. just fighting. It’s been a good week at the gym this week and it’s feeling like I’m beginning to make progress again. After what has felt like an eternity of sitting comfortably in Hiatus, I think I’m starting to get my groove back.

It’s been good because as usual, I have the opportunity to spar with lots of new faces and in that respect see what I can learn from each person I meet. One of the things that’s good about having 2 gyms to train out of is that I’m always getting a new set of eyes looking at me, and it’s good to hear from different people that there’s a lot I’m doing right.  I guess this kind of takes a different slant on my usual ‘work in progress’ theme (well there still is, but it’s always good to know your getting somewhere.) and I’m hoping that next week stays in a similar vein, despite the threat of a imminent cold.(never fun when you’ve got boxing to do.)

Fight training here is similar to my old camp but its different in a lot of ways to. I’ve been asking myself of late how well I’ve made the transition from there to here. I think it’s safe to say I’ve settled in reasonably well.What makes this gym different from previous camps is that I’ve fought a couple of their lads before and I’ve lost to them. I wonder sometimes if this effects the way people here see me. However, my record to date is acceptable for my new gym, and the way I see it (and it’s good knowing my old trainer does too) is that the fights before, albeit some that were close were really experience in the long run. Bar a couple, they were fun too. I think there’s always going to be a part of me that feels a little sad when I think about how things have started for me with fighting, and so these days when I fight I don’t just fight for me and my new gym, I fight for them too.

I’ve been asking myself recently why at 35 years of age, I am still just as eager to get in a ring now, as I was nearly 4 years ago. Like the great Kevin Ross says, it can all be summed up in one word. Passion. If you love what you do, then why stop doing it. Besides, as I’ve said before it’ll be good fun seeing how far I can get. It’s interesting because I’ve found myself kind of setting out a road map for the year ahead, and each milestone I reach gives me affirmation that I’m still on the right path and I’m doing the right thing. When you listen to your heart as much as I do, I guess you can’t go wrong.

So despite the ups and downs, the good times and the bad, it’s fair to say that I’m happy that I’m here doing what I do. I guess all we can ever do in life is do our best to be the best we can be, and everything else always takes care of itself. I’ll be talking more about training next week, but this one has been kicking around for a while so I thought I’d share.  Have a good week, train hard. I’ll see you on the road.