Friday Arvo - took it off of uni knowing I'll be working overtime in the field next week. Decided to use it to attack the 'garden'.

The 'garden' is a nightmare! Armed with nothing but an non-motorized push mower and my hands I worked for 4 hours trying to tackle the lawn and weeds along the fence line which have grown taller than me. Strange how they just blend in with the trees once they reach a certain size!

Then went to boxing training but was absolutely stuffed - pushing that gyromower is equivalent to a lot of pushups and pulling those weeds a lot of seated rows!

Just warmed up but doing some footwork with one of the beginners at Coach George's request and then did some light partnerwork with Kristine. My next opponent who I may be matched with in 2 weeks is not a southpaw but I'm worried most at working out how to handle the southpaws at interclub sparring. Kristine is a big help. She plays a southpaw for the night and I basically practice defence only while moving left.

Cycle to hardware store - accidentally overestimate how much I can carry in my bag rack and call my sister to rescue me who drives home. I must look really tired because I out of sympathy for me she volunteers to work a day in the garden with me on Sunday (YES!!!!!).

Saturday - Still at war with the garden. Spend all morning on it except for another trip to a nearby hardware store and for final doctors appointment to complete my yearly boxing checkup. Paperwork is due in Monday!

Have an hour sleep in the afternoon before getting ready for sparring. My bro Leonard picks me up and we put my bike in his car because he'll have to go straight to something else once it's finished and won't be able to drive me home.

When we get to sparring the first thing Leonard makes me do is go and tell them that last week was too hard. I hate this. I feel embarrassed like I might aswell walk in there wearing a pink tutu and an "I love Paris Hilton" T shirt!

I walk up and mumble something like "I might just do some light sparring today Rod I didn't pull up to well last week" and I shuffle back to my bro. He says in his big bro tone "Sharla you've got to communicate better than that!" and walks across to explain my concussion to Rod. I have to give Rod credit - he doesn't make me feel like I don't belong there at all and knowing I can't handle the same intensity as the guys doesn't stop him from including me which is really nice!

Sparring with Omar is lighter this time. It's borderline - i don't like the natural power in some of his hooks but it's much better and I don't feel close to getting hurt this time. I have a chance to see what's going on this time and I think the reason I have so much difficulty with him is part of the difference between a pro fighter like him and an amateur like me.

One - he's just got a lot more combos he can easily pull off than me and closes distance very easily. For example - he can move in throwing combos with BOTH left and right hooks (in the same combo)so I can't move sideways to get away, it doesn't matter if I move back because he can throw combos easily as he's jumping in (probably why some of the hooks land a little hard) and he soon has me close to the ropes anyway.

If i could see them coming enough to duck that would work but while I've practiced that sparring other people he's not as predictable as other people. I didn't think he was that skilled before because it's easy to land punches on him but now i can see more of what's going on I see some skills.

Two - he's quite happy to let me jab him in the face until the cows come home. He's going to ignore anything that isn't hard enough to hurt him because I guess unlike in amateur competitions he doesn't need to worry about the light ones in the pros - he just has to get in to unload.

At one stage during sparring he's nodding at me and saying something I just can't quite hear. People here don't get that i come from a loud family and you really need to speak up!

Talking to my brother afterwards he feels my main problem is that I don't keep my hands up enough. I know I don't. My brother has noticed that I do it well in shadow boxing but not sparring so he thinks it's just a mindset and might be more easily fixed than i realize. He wants to work on that with me for 15 mins every night after Judo trainings for a while.

We also notice that Omar isn't going all out - not when he's sparring me and not even the other guys. We think he might actually want to be hit hard though. i don't relate to that. I'm an amateur - whether the punches are hard or light I need to make them miss to avoid loosing on points so i don't need to be hit hard to want to avoid them. However, I guess i have had bouts where I won on fitness and by moving but didn't really unload any power and i should be able to turn that on if I want to - without being angry.

We think Omar is occasionally hitting me a bit harder wanting me to unload on him. He wants me to fire up but it goes against my instincts after years of sparring bigger people which say if I unload against a more powerful person I'll get worse back. I can spar so light it's like having a fly land on your face.

Before we leave Rod says that Omar lives very close to my gym and they are going to come in on Thursday night for some more sparring. Rods being very encouraging. Leonard's going to come too so we can discuss the possibility of me going hard at Omar if that's what he wants as long as my head isn't taken off in return!

Sunday

My sister and I are slaves to the garden. it's hard work - I'd classify it as being a day of high rep, low weight endurance resistance work. We make a pile of dead wood and weeds that's about 3 Xs bigger than the two of us put together.

Pity my spoilt princess flatmate who likes to pay the bills late can only clean up her room, spill salad dressing on the kitchen floor without cleaning up after herself and leave the rubbish from her room near the kitchen bin thinking it's my job to take it outside. The first conversation we've had since the one RE the rent a few weeks ago is me telling her to take her own rubbish out!