Second Program: Week #14

Week 60: Second Program - week 14 out of 15

Week settings:

• Area of focus: Cardio-Strength
• Number of training days: 3
• Limitations: none
• Last week feedback: "Hard, but ok"

Training:

• Monday: rest day
• Tuesday: Hades standard x2 (43:26* -First Time)
• Wednesday: Venus (15:54* -PB)
• Thursday: boxing training
• Friday: 400m sprint (01:29) +400m sprint (01:26) +5K run (25:31 -PB) +Iris standard (30:34* -PB)

Statistics:

• 2'759 points
• 118 minutes

As explained in the last post, after 7 straight days of training, I took a full day of rest and asked the Coach to generate 3 training days only.

But the coach doesn't like when we try to take the easy road.
So despite a day less, it packed about as much sweat as usual (often ~3'000 points per week).


On day 1, I tried my first double Hades. The last burpees were difficult, but I was pleased with my pullups. My first thoughts after competition were to thank Kronos. All these iterations over the last few weeks paid-off.

The first half took me 20 minutes, the second approximately 23.5 minutes. As often with multiple workouts, it's hard to keep the same pace all along. In this case, I found that the drop in pace was reasonable (at least roughly what I expected)
My rule of thumb for estimating the length of a new double workout is to take the average completion time of the single version and add 25% on the second repetition. For example, on an average day I would complete Hades in 19 to 20 minutes.

So following my rule, I expected to complete Hades x2 somewhere in-between:

• 19:00 + (19:00 +25% extra time) = 19 + (22:45) = 42:45

and

• 20:00 + (20:00 +25% extra time) = 20 + (25:00) = 45:00

I'd add that this rule works best with regular workouts. For the most difficult ones (Kentauros, Kronos, etc.), I use a penalty closer to 50% on the latter repetitions.
For short ones (or workouts that includes rest periods), I assume no to 10% penalty only.



On day 2, I only had 1 Venus. After so many busy days, it felt great to have a training day with only a short session! There was no side effect from day 1 efforts. I had a good feeling on pushups and improved my PB by over a minute.



For the last day, the coach made me run in all kind of ways. It started with two 400m sprints. I was tempted to run just below my fastest pace to save some energy for the following workouts. But in the end I performed on-par with previous attempts (second run was a tie with my PB).
Then I was assigned 5K. Like for the sprints, I ran without thinking about what was coming next and even managed to improve my PB by 1 tiny second.
Then came Iris, with it's 2 x 1 km mixed with exercises. I was a bit more apprehensive about this one. Last attempt during Hell Week had left me breathless, and I now had to do it after having already run 5.8 km.
But it wasn't such a bad experience. Last week I think that I tried to do too many climbers in a row, too fast. Which forced me to take breathing breaks. This time, partly due to tired legs, I performed the climbers more slowly but with no/little breaks. To my surprise (and pleasure), this approach produced a PB. Again, only by 1 second, but a PB is a PB...
And it's the best way to finish a training week!