Cardio&Strength - W5D5

 Apollon: *00:32:45 

After Kentauros' hell week, and recovering completely, today's session consisted in Apollon, an all new cardio workout that alternates burpees, 400 mt runs and deep squats. Compared to a hard strength session as was Kentauros, I find these cardio sessions to be almost a walk in the park (emphasis in the ALMOST part of the sentence), and a "joy" to do. I finally finished week #5!!!! It looked like this day would never come...

Burpees are my friends now and squats were always friendly, so I had no problem doing the workout without any modified repetitions. Yaaay for me! I got a star right away :-P. I had to stop though every once in a while to catch my breath. It is very noticeable when I have not been training steadily. I believe that if I had to to this same workout a couple more days in a row, I could get my time near the 25 minute mark with relatively little effort. We shall see what comes my way now though.

And still on the brighter side of life... I keep on training with company =). My close-one that had trouble with my getting-in shape is now not only doing some Freeletics workouts with me... They are even joining me in the soccer pitch and jogging while I play so WE KEEP MAKING PROGRESS!  

Cardio&Strength - W4D2

 Uranos: 00:45:20 

Today is my first time doing Uranos, a new cardio + strength workout. Uranos includes, among other things, a 2 km run, a series of 50 Pull Ups and a series of 50 Push Ups. PHEW!!!

I must be honest. I absolutely HATE running. With all due respect to the countless runners out there, I think it's the single most boring exercise ever. I always dreaded the times when I had to take those endurance tests in school and run long distances, or those 30 to 45 minutes of jogging the University soccer coach made us do before every training session... I'd much rather be chasing a ball than going round in circles! However, now that I'm in better shape running does not seem like such a hard thing to do anymore. It is still not my favourite thing to do, but I finished the 2 km in 12 minutes, which I think is quite a decent time, and I almost didn't have time to complain/suffer from it. I'm even confident I could have sped up and finished a bit earlier!

This week's instructions specifically say that the goal for week #4 is to take the workout outside one's house for the first time (mostly all workouts can be done indoors), and thus be forced to overcome external obstacles such as the weather. Lucky me, it's spring here, so the weather is good and not really an issue. I train late in the afternoon or night, so it's not that hot anymore. I don't have a park nearby though (well, there is one, but it's uphill so it's not ideal) so I decided to do the running in the street, and the rest of the workout in my yard. 

Let's call my house point A. I had already measured 200 meters (just counting steps, but it turned out to be quite an accurate measurement when I used the car to check) down the street to point B so I could do A→B→A and get the 400 meters I need for workouts like Hera. Yesterday I took the car and went from my house the opposite direction of point B, and measured 800 meters to point C. This way I have: B -200 m- A -800 m- C (1 km from B to C, with my house in between). So, for my 2 km run I did A→C→(A)→B→A and then I got inside to do the rest of the workout.

I've had some pain in my hands, arms and shoulders from all the Pull Ups I've been doing lately, but it's not nearly as bad as the first time. My gorilla grip is getting better and I hardly have any calluses forming. Today it still took me a while to finish the 50 repetitions, but I'm pretty sure it was way less than the 15 minutes it took me the first time. Baby steps, right? On the much much brighter side, I took it as a personal challenge to do the 50 Push Ups with a star, and I did!!!! I had to rest a bit every 10 repetitions or so, but hey, I think that's better than doing them girly style with the knees on the ground. I consider this a big achievement, perhaps my mayor breakthrough so far. I'm confident that rather sooner than later I'll also be able to do the Pull Ups the right way too so I can get a star on all these workouts!