I've been doing a fair bit of training for the last few weeks. I always train a minimum of 4 nights a week anyway, but for the last six weeks it's been more like every night. That's because today was my 2nd Dan grading, and I've been preparing for it like mad. It's been 12 years since I passed my 1st dan, and I've never stopped training since, so the thought of going for a grading after all that time was a tad stressful to say the least.

Chief Instructors from Europe were over for a 3 day course this weekend, Fri - Sun, culminating in the dan gradings. Today was a killer, a 3 hour course with no break, getting tiny errors pointed out so we could correct them prior to the grading, hopefully. Then 2 hours later back to the honbu for the grading. Five sitting 2nd Dan and 2 sitting 3rd dan. A few pounds of sweat and a thick lip later, I was left with the others for what seeemed about 45 minutes during the deliberations.

Then we were called back in and given the news - all passed, apart from one. I passed and was awarded my 2nd Dan certificate, so at long last my stress levels can return to normal