I had the second session of the beginner SUP lesson this morning.

I woke up early, I checked the weather and decided to double up my sunscreen because it was a bright day. I made sure that I applied sunscreen generously all over my body. I prefer not to get sunburnt this time.

Because of the bright day, I decided to wear my long sleeves one piece swimsuit​. I was hoping that the material could shield UV rays from my skin. Surprisingly it did! I’m only more tan on the exposed areas like my face, neck, hands and legs.

Arrived 20 minutes before session starts. Lesson begun with Stephen asked us questions about the paddle and the board.

Then we carried the board into the water after we put on the leg leash.

This time it was just Leah and me in the session.

Today’s lesson was a bit harder for me.

We paddled further and practiced paddling.

At we started going out, I somehow lost my balance and I fell into the water. I remembered Stephen mentioned in the previous lesson, if we fall, make sure that we spread our hands wide and so we don’t fall deep into the water. I did spread my hands but my body didn’t fall straight, instead my butt hit the water first. I did sink into the water for a bit. Then I came to the surface and swam to the nose of the board and tried to get hold on of the board. I didn’t manage to and the board moved further away from me and I was still in the water. The second time I tried, I successfully got onto my board.

I was soaking wet obviously from the water. Thank God that my cap was stuck onto my hair and my sunglasses was still on my face. Water went into both my ears and nose.

Minutes after that Leah fell into the water and she was quick to recover and got onto her board.

I was like what the hell happened to us?! LOL 😂

Then I remembered to start my watch to record my activity.

And so we carried on paddling and crossing a river bank to go to the bay next to Pantai Jerudong.

As I was paddling, I noticed that my arms begun to fatigue and my back started to hurt.

I tried to remember what I had learnt​ in session one and applied it. Unfortunately I felt tired from straining my back.

After we arrived at the bay next to Pantai Jerudong, Stephen started to give us instructions on proper paddling.

A few things to keep in mind are keep both arms straight when paddling, make sure the paddle is vertical when paddling forward and keep the body straight, refrain from twisting the body.

Now I see why my arms were fatigue when I paddled. It was because I was relying on the power of my arms instead of my core to move forward.

That back pain was because I was twisting my body instead of keeping my body and arms straight.

Also I noticed often when I paddled, sometimes I went off course (Stephen sometimes making jokes about this, saying that I’m going to Labuan), this was caused by paddling the paddle at an angle. The moment I practiced putting the paddle vertically into the water, I moved straight forward instead of moving at a slight turn.

Those three really made a huge difference in the way I paddled. Not only I got more power, it was a lot less strenuous on my body.

We were practicing and focusing on paddling for quite sometime. Then Stephen asked both of us to race each other and to add more power to our paddling.

We did and Leah was faster than me.

I realised that I lack power when compared to Leah. I’m guessing my core is weak for now.

We also learnt how to know the direction of the wind, SUP etiquettes and the 3 Ps.

This time, I can feel that I’m better at back paddling and I know how to break as well. I now know what to do to prevent my board from hitting other boards.

However, I still need to work on my sweep turn because it took me longer to do it. I gotta learn to relax and soften my knees. Would you believe me if I told you that I lost the feeling in my feet while standing on the board? Stephen kept reminding us to wiggle our toes once in a while.

By the time we were heading back to the starting area, Leah saw a baby jellyfish while paddling, I saw a fish jumped out of the water and skirted his way away from us and Stephen decided to take a dip in the ocean because it was so so freaking hot!

After 2 hours, I felt exhausted and I wished I went home to catch up on my sleep but I didn’t. Went to watch a movie instead. I was lucky I didn’t fall asleep at all. I was also so tempted to break my fast with water because I was so thirsty. Apparently the amount of water that I drank in the wee morning wasn’t enough to hydrate myself. Bobby managed to convince me to just continue with my fast and I did.

In my previous lesson, I didn’t track my SUP activity because I thought my watch Suunto Ambit3 Sport doesn’t track the sport. I found out a few days ago that it can and I was wearing my heart rate monitor hoping to find out the amount of calories that I burnt from SUP. I was disappointed because it didn’t show the calories. Just the distance, time and average speed and also the GPS location. Turns out, the heart rate monitor was disabled. So in next session, I will enable it and see if the watch records the calories burnt.

However, I did sync my workout with Endomondo and it shows the amount of calories burnt. Although there is one minor discrepancy, it recorded 1hr 40mins workout instead of 1hr 57mins.

And below is the recorded GPS of our session.

SUP images are by Stephen from Surfskime.

Click here for my first SUP lesson.

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