Here’s a new’ish painting inspired by Shaun Payne in Indo, his father’s awesome surf coaching and the nice people at the beach resort.
It is oil on canvas with wild garlic and rosemary olive oil with marker pen and is small to medium size.
Thank You
Monthly Archive for Dec, 2008
After hitting a peak fitness level and taking some time off to rest I’m now back into my regular training again.
I took about two weeks break from all my sea sports and even from swimming.
I just did light gym and stretching.
The last couple of days I did a mix of training: swimming, surf paddling, running, cycling with some short and light kitesurfing and surfing sessions.
This felt good – mostly taking it at about 10 – 50% and relaxing into a moderate endurance groove.
Yesterday I stepped up the endurance a bit as an experiment. I did lots of little sessions with lots of resting and eating between. The total training time probably worked out to about 6 hours but most of this was little more than walking exertion. It felt good. But by the end of the day I really felt nicely tired and needed to eat quite a lot.
I slept really well in the night.
This morning I feel a fair bit of that lactic acid fatigue. After training most days for two years it takes quite a lot to get this feeling so it feels like an achievement. I quite like this kind of mild pain as I feel that I have earned it and that I am improving. After a few slow days I’ll be able to take it further and this feels inspiring.
Enjoy the African Summer 🙂
I’ve taken a few weeks break from kiting. I took some time to surf full time around JBay in South Africa. There is something magical about this area. This history, the people, the culture, the vibe. I love it. I did score some dream sessions and had a couple of magic dolphin rainy sunrise dawny experiences with a good friend from my local break.
I got some really good new surf gear after riding really old knackered stuff for some years and this felt pretty good too. Then I over did things and surfed myself out a bit. After this I took two weeks off and didn’t surf at all. I just chilled out, played some music, did a little painting and some light gym and talked a hell of a lot of crap. I had lost a bit of weight following the overtraining and the crash following it. So I made sure that I got enough to eat and I’ve mostly got the weight back to what it was before. Now I feel pretty good again.
A couple of days ago I went for a walk with my mother and her dog near my parents home. There was a light breeze blowing and I had a new super cheap one line kite from a little toy shop to try. It was fun but proved really tricky. One line kiting is a real art. It’s like a zen thing. It reminds me of my childhood flying kites on beach holidays with cousins and friends. The last time I flew a one line kite was with a friend in Finland quite a few years back. He’s a bit older than me and has a kind of real Finnish man thing about him – extreme but strong and calm. I was just getting into kitesurfing and found his zen meditation approach to kite flying really refreshing compared to a lot of the power crazy jumpy kids and typical blokes that usually seem to be attracted to the sport.
Rock on Ilka. Maybe we fly a kite somewhere again some time soon’ish.
Have fun
