Aphrodite (S), *00:36:23
As I’ve told you on previous posts, I’m on summer holidays
these weeks, so besides training and painting the apartment (which finally looks
awesome), I’m also taking two short trips to the beach. Knowing I’d be
away, I only programmed two training sessions for week #8 of my Cardio&Strength Coach. I did my
last session of week #7 on Monday, had a soccer match on Tuesday night, went
away from Wednesday morning until Friday night and trained on Saturday and
Monday morning (I rested on Sunday, although I swam a bit in my parent’s pool
that day…)
Along with my older sister and my girlfriend we accompanied
my father for three days to Pichilemu and
surroundings (about 210 kms South from Santiago). By “surroundings” I mean the country side around
50 km inland, where the family of my father is originally from and where he likes
going a few times a year, to visit some of the relatives he still has in the
area and to buy locally harvested beans, lentils, honey and organic olive oil
for the year. The thing is, given the reasonable distance to the beach we (or I)
took the chance stay at Pichilemu, which is one of the best beaches in Chile to
surf. If you’ve read some of my
older posts, I took my first surfing lesson in October 2013 while on a trip to
Ecuador with my sister, right around when I was starting Freeletics (click here).
I had been wanting to surf again, but never did something about it. Thanks to
my sister who pushed me on taking this little trip, I took my second lesson on
Thursday (with a thicker wetsuit, ad hoc for these latitudes). I was expecting
to be cold and/or to have forgotten what I had learned, but everything went
smoothly, like riding a bike. It felt amazing to take this opportunity and surf
again. It turns out I’m quite good at it and it makes me very happy to be able
to catch a wave and stand on that board. I’m really thinking to maybe get into
it a bit more seriously… we’ll see what
the future holds.
When I got back to the city I quickly left the water behind
and traded it for my dear friend Aphrodite.
I feel like I’ve been doing Aphrodite every
week... well, #CoachKnows. We all came back quite tired from the trip, but I was
expecting to improve my time. I felt
right during the first 50 burpees that it was not going to be that easy. Maybe
it was all the driving, or the sun and heat, or the surf lesson, but my arms
felt heavy and lacking strength to push me up during the burpees. It actually
took me 1 min 5 sec more to finish Aphrodite than during Hell Week… I know it’s
not that much of a difference, but still it bothers me a bit. This made me think
again about my PB of 27+ minutes. I accomplished
that time when the Coach was not around and I had to keep track of what series
I was doing and how many reps were there etc. Considering I feel similarly fit (if
not fitter) than last year, I find it hard to believe that now it takes me more
than 8 minutes more to finish Aphrodite compared to that PB. I think it’s very
probable that I miscounted the reps or
skipped a whole series that day… There’s no way to knowing for sure, so we’ll
have to see if I can go down to 27 minutes any time soon to figure this mystery
out. Other than the heavy arms, Aphrodite went smoothly. I feel my technique on
the burpees is much better; I can jump back and forward with both feet much
more lightly than before. I also have a good knowledge on where to break my
series of squats to maximize my time. I think one of the weaknesses I should
probably work on are situps because no matter how hard I try to speed up, they keep
taking way longer than they should…
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