Hi Ho, James here back in the blogging chair after it was briefly occupied by Karen.

Yes it's true, as you can read below Karen has made her virgin post, and she kindly helped me out by cynically reflecting on the family dinner we just went to so I don't have to.

So this leave's me to reflect on something else. Boxing. Boxing? I hear you ask. Yes Boxing. As a part of my eternal, and yet remarkably futile attempt to change my body shape to something other than round, I decided to take up a bit of lunchtime sport. Of course I could have chosen volleyball or aerobics, but since I am one of those guys who generally likes to back himself just a little too much, I chose to start taking boxing training at the gym. And here is my story.....

I turned up at the class and there was about 8 fellow workers from Santos with me. It started pretty well with the warm up, we did some basic punching moves, and the instructor said I had pretty good technique. Who said going to Salisbury High wouldn't pay off someday? After the warm up, we paired off with people we were to attempt to hit for the next 40 minutes. Safe to say the guy from corporate I paired up with could have punched seven shades of shit out of me if he wanted, it turns out that I am not as fit or strong as I think I am. Anyway I started with the gloves punching into his hands, and of course being the bravado boy I went in hard punching his hands with all I had. Later, I realised this was a mistake, and if I paced myself a little maybe I wouldn't be as sore as I am now. But as I've always said, I regret nothing.

After what seemed like a long 3 minutes of punching, it was prize fighter Pete's turn with the gloves. He hit hard, I was glad his punches were landing in my hands not to the side of my head. A bell then rang, and we moved on to the next 'station'. No punching at this station, just one on one situps for a couple of minutes, Jelly belly vs the Washboard. Joy, why do I sign up for this sort of thing voluntarily? 30 seconds in I am doing OK. 1 minute - starting to struggle and Pete asks 'are you OK?' 'I'm fine' I lied. 1 minute 30, almost can't lift my fat abdomenon off the deck. 1 minute 45 - tummy muscles are going to snap, 2 minutes bell finally goes. Phew. Off to the next station, something for a bit of a rest? No.....

Skipping. Cripes, that famous boxing footwork exercise. Started OK, I am not totally uncoordinated, but I sure ain't Micheal Flately either. I didn't start tripping on the rope until near the end when I started to get puffed out, when I could barely string two skips together. All the while of course my partner Pete was lightly skipping over the rope, changing feet and doing all the fancy stuff and hardly breaking a sweat.

And then back to punching. This time me and the instructer, who wasn't content to stand still and let me punch his hands, ohh no. He had to circle around me, and throw the odd swing back at me that I had to duck under. I have a new admiration for professional fighters - how do they keep this up for 13 rounds? Survival instinct I guess. But I kept my head on so I did a quick station on the rower, punching bag and the bike and we started all over again.

By this point I was running on nothing other than adrenalin and pride. EventTaking punches from Pete in round 2 started to hurt, each one jarring through the pads and up my arms. Like I said, I was thanking the lord at this point that I wasn't in a real boxing ring taking these blows to the head. Didn't make it to the end of sit ups round 2, and skipping round 2 was a disgrace, I think I managed to string 6 jumps together at best without getting tangled in the rope.

But like they say, what doesn't kill you only makes you stronger, so I guess now I must be a bit stronger now than I was this morning. Although this is a truth belied by my aching muscles! Never mind, I will be back for more on Thursday, can't wait for the pain....