Golden Touch CRAPS

Okay, I swim three times a week: Mondays (1 mile), Wednesdays (1/2 mile) and Fridays (1 mile). The beautiful AP and I were doing Sundays but it is just too hard to get a time period that is late afternoon.

Yesterday, we went to our first boxing class. Our instructor is one of these Ultimate Fighting black belt whatevers. Yes, after 43 years of retirement from the pugilistic sport, I am back. (You can read about my 19th and final fight way back when in The Virgin Kiss.)

We worked out for a half hour, hitting the heavy bag for about 10 minutes, jumping rope, sit-ups, pushups, medicine ball, stretching.

The jumping rope was awful. I would go up but my belly would follow a second later; then I would go down and my belly would follow a second later. So what happened was this - I would be going one way and my belly would be going the other way. It's tough to jump rope like that. Oh, by the way, in today's gymnasticeeze you do not have a "belly," you have a "core." I have a lot of core.

I couldn't actually do a single sit-up all the way (43 years ago I could do 1,000 sit-ups - I do not lie); I couldn't even do a female push up (43 years ago I could do 100 pushups and 25 pushups where I clapped my hands BEHIND my back, winning a lot of money in bars doing that); but I could stretch all right, so I didn't feel too idiotic doing that.

I still had power in my punches but my speed wasn't quite where it was 43 years ago.

And right now, this morning, I am in AGONY! I hurt all over. I am using muscles I haven't used since I last fought - some 70 pounds ago! - and those muscles are telling me, "Forty-three years is a long, long time."