I’m pretty much “well” now, aside from the occasional cough and rare coughing fit. I feel fine, just a little tickle in my throat now and then that sets me off.

But being “well” and having a gas tank of endurance are two wholly separate things. Open mat was full of friendly greetings and inquires about where I’ve been. I figured I might as well kick the day off with JP.

And our two rounds went better than expected. With a little work I passed him a few times, directly into mount at least once. It’s probably a bad habit on my part, but I just sucked up his choke attempt and kept moving, rather than defend my neck. I focused on maintaining my good position. I still worked for the finish, but I was pretty cautious about it today. So I was both reckless and overly cautious in the same 5 minutes!

We had been going pretty hard, so I took a couple of minutes to catch my breath. I felt okay, but I could tell that I wasn’t 100% yet. Damian saw me sitting and told me to go roll with Yael, so I did for a couple of rounds. She’s pretty squirrely.

And then I found out why he wanted me to roll with her. It was my “warm up” to roll with him. Ugh. It was pretty much the last thing I wanted to have happen today. I started off too fast and was just about dead a minute and a half into the round. I had gotten to half guard, and lost the underhook. I wizzered to prevent him from getting to my back, and then attempted a d’arce choke…which I couldn’t get because his I couldn’t get my arms around his arm and neck to lock it in. I did step over and switched to an armlock instead. We restarted, and he was on top this time. I was going to try doing the mini-spider guard setup we did earlier this week, but never got it set up. Instead I tried arm dragging to the back…and he re-dragged me back. I escaped back to half guard, and he started to pass. He had a grip on my collar, and as he was coming around, I tried to americana that arm. I thought I had him, but he continued moving around, and kept going, all the way over my head and around to the other side, basically doing a 270 degree turn on me. By doing so, he relieved the pressure on his elbow. He did like the attempt and showed me how if I had my foot on his hip, rather than between his legs, he wouldn’t have been able to advance the way he did.