Travel day 6 / Training day 4

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Another sunny and warm day here. Unfortunately it started much earlier than I hoped. Still haven’t solved the sleeping more than 4 hours, or past about 1:30 am local time. Standard breakfast routine, but I ate a light dinner last night, so I was hungry. I didn’t want to eat too much knowing what was coming though. I’m not much of a breakfast person anyway. BTS was again nearly empty on the way out. Almost seems like it’s a day off here, but on the way back it was crazy packed. Cars were so jammed that people couldn’t even get on. Got to the gym right about 7:25 and hit the ground running. Today feels much more like I remember with the heat and humidity picking up. 7 laps this morning in a little better time, just under 30 minutes. The best things was no cramps, knee pain, or hip tightness. It felt so good, I half thought of adding another lap, but I’ll save the running increase for next week. Next up was 15 minutes of jump rope. A few others came in while I was running and jumping, so maybe 3 more besides me. Still a fair group. One girl is from Long Island NY, another guy is from the Netherlands, and he’s working just around the block from the gym for the next year. Sounds like there are a few of them who come here to train. And the scooter guy who does his rounds with Fahlaep. After jumping, I did a couple shadow boxing rounds and was lucky enough to have Santafaa give me some corrections to some of my techniques. Just some subtle differences that I never realized, but now seem quite obvious. A round or so on the heavy bag, working on teeps and knees again, and the correct footwork and hand positions, based on the mornings instructions before heading into the ring. Fahlaep had just finished putting the guy before me through his paces, so I had a feeling I’d be seeing similar. He did ramp up the speed of the sequences and the intensity of his pads. I’m seeing a few more bruises just now…. We did only 3 rounds on the pads this morning, but luckily, he didn’t skip on the 20 kicks each side. I would have been disappointed. Can you hear my eyes rolling from here? it seems he decided that I would do a couple of boxing rounds with the other fighter in the camp. What a great experience for me, probably not so much for him. I enjoy seeing how I do against another fighter. Of course he played with me like a cat swatting at a mouse. Well, maybe it wasn’t that bad, but I noticed he moved much better than I did. Looking back, I think I was just not relaxed enough. He kept leaning back out of the way of all the punches most of the time. Those types of rounds and the small sparring with Fahlaep are exhausting and so different than just throwing kicks or punches wherever the pads are. I can’t wait to get the chance to do it again!

This afternoon, I was feeling a bit more tired. Possible from the extra exertion in the morning rounds, or lack of sleep. Hard to say what it was. And the heat and humidity do seem to be ramping up right in tune with the pace of training. Got to the gym quickly, and did get the 7 laps in again with no issues, and it even felt a little faster than the morning, which just didn’t seem right. 15 minutes of jump rope and I was totally drenched in sweat. i was worried about my endurance in the ring with the heat now turned up to high. A couple rounds on the heavy bag again as a warmup as Fahlaep put another guy through his paces. For me, It was the same routines, with multiple kicks and the pace and power was feels to be slowly increasing. Fahlaep does like to improvise and toss in clinches where I have to not get killed and throw some knees and then push him away with power and follow that up with a kick. That’s the exhausting part. He must have seen I wasn’t quite feeling it this afternoon because he said shadow boxing, no weights, no bag.

Somehow I got really behind tonight, so I repeated dinner at the Wine Connection which is connected to the hotel. I just didn’t feel like searching out someplace. I want to try and get back quickly and relax a bit tonight. Looking forward to a little break this weekend. Just checked the Fitbit, and it shows I’m burning around 4500 calories a day, on average. I know for sure I’m not taking in that many because I haven’t hit Starbucks since I’ve been here, and I haven’t found any good cookies to attack.

Not any good pictures for today’s entry. ill try and see if I can do a bit more exploring around lunchtime.

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Photos

Gym cat
Cats are more prevalent here than the dogs now. If I counted them on the runs, I bet it’s over 15 easy. A couple were having an arguement and got a glove thrown at them from Fahlaep!

Comments

[RJR]

hero
Brother i dont know how you do it. My knees & joints have been screaming last 2 weeks when running. you are my hero. crunching-out FQ on 5542 while doing QAP on 5607 - the grind dont stop as #2 son says. Come home fit & yoked so you can make me feel bad. Humidity kicked in this week & the bugs are showing up. Itll feel like winter to you after Bangkok. Go hard in the ring my friend. C U when u get back. RJR