At this moment, the number of push-ups Wang Ye had done reached one hundred and eight.
His chest muscles were extremely sore, and his arms started to tremble. He mustered the last bit of strength to do two more push-ups, rounding the number to a neat whole.
"Phew! A hundred and ten!"
Wang Ye stood up.
His face was brimming with uncontrollable joy.
Yesterday, he could only do sixty-seven; today, he managed to do a hard-earned one hundred and ten!
This strength increase was truly rapid!
After finishing, Wang Ye realized that if his physique kept evolving like this,
just using self-weight exercises like push-ups might no longer accurately measure his strength gains.
He needed quantifiable weight data.
For instance, weightlifting — using the weight of barbells to precisely gauge his strength level.
Moreover, this standardized exercise would allow him to comparatively assess his weightlifting data against those of Olympic athletes to see how far his strength is from the current human limits.
Wang Ye kneaded his sore muscles, "I'll find a suitable gym at the mall after finishing my run later."
Then Wang Ye took out a crumpled draft paper from the study.
On the second row, he wrote down.
[April 21st Evolution Data.]
[Fourth day of evolution.]
[Body: 1.7]
[Divine: 0.8]
[Evolution Level: 14.0]
[Weight: 71.34KG]
[Height: 175.5CM]
[Push-ups: 110]
[Five kilometers: empty]
[Ten kilometers: empty]
[Miscellaneous records: All five senses have slightly increased, notably in smell evolution, reduced changes in skin keratin layer, slight acceleration in thinking speed...]
Wang Ye stopped writing.
He carefully folded the draft paper and placed it between a book.
Then he changed into shorts and a short-sleeve sports outfit, put on new running shoes, poured a spoon of electrolyte powder into his water bottle, shook it well, and tucked it into the canvas bag he carried, ready to test his five-kilometer and ten-kilometer running data.
He stepped out the door and headed to the riverside trail where he often went for a run.
Following the dynamic stretching warm-up shared by a professional athlete in the group, he activated his waist, hips, and joints.
The moves were simple—
Heel raises for a minute, lunge stretches for a minute, high knees for a minute, knee hugs for a minute.
After one round, he started to sweat lightly, and his muscles weren't as stiff.
One must admit, the warm-up method shared by the professional athlete was indeed effective.
In just four minutes, his muscles and joints reached an optimum state, far more efficient than his regular brisk walking warm-up.
After warming up.
Wang Ye stepped onto the track, activated the running mode on his watch, and started jogging around Longjiang Park.
Due to this morning's evolution, his physique had significantly improved.
Yesterday's pace became much easier for him.
Running at a pace of about 5 minutes per kilometer, he ran continuously for one kilometer, and his heart rate didn't even reach 160.
This speed was evidently comfortable for him.
To find a pace suitable for himself, he could only gradually increase his stride frequency to test his physical limits.
As Wang Ye accelerated, the real-time stride frequency on his watch gradually increased. From 180 steps per minute, it gradually rose to 190 per minute.
His pace also improved to four and a half minutes per kilometer.
At this speed, Wang Ye finally felt some exertion.
His heart rate steadily rose to around 180, the drum-like beats echoed constantly in his ears, and the blood in his body flowed swiftly like a river, his leg muscles burning as if on fire.
This feeling was as painful as the final sprint of the 1000-meter test during his university fitness test, pushing his body's functions to the limit. Muscles suddenly transitioned from low to high energy consumption, breathing couldn't keep up with the oxygen demand, simply put, it felt uncomfortable all over. His mind, overwhelmed by inertia, persistently urged him to stop and rest.
Though he felt like he might cough up blood, Wang Ye found that he could barely maintain a balance between energy expenditure and recovery in this extreme state.
His breathing was turbine-like, with an astonishing oxygen intake, providing more energy release.
He couldn't help but marvel at his frightening recovery capability, then bit his teeth to maintain this speed towards the ten-kilometer goal.
Wang Ye realized during his run that when he increased his running pace to 4.50, his Skill Level improved faster than yesterday.
Yesterday at a five-minute pace, each kilometer barely increased his Skill Level by 1%.
Today, however, it increased by nearly 2% per kilometer.
The efficiency almost doubled.
And this change occurred only after he consciously increased the difficulty of his training.
This made Wang Ye suddenly realize that the more challenges he encountered during training, the faster his Skill Level would improve.
After finishing the ten kilometers, Wang Ye leaned against the riverside iron fence, gasping for breath, while reaching for the electrolyte water from his bag, taking a small sip.
Then he limped over to a park bench and sat down.
He lifted his watch.
[10.1 kilometers.]
[Time: 00:45.24]
[Average pace: 4.48]
"About 13 minutes faster than yesterday, the progress is quite apparent."
Wang Ye couldn't help but smile.
He sat on the bench, crossed his legs, massaging the sore calf muscles.
He noticed that after high-intensity training, his calf muscles were so warm they felt hot to the touch.
At the same time, Wang Ye felt slightly dizzy, unable to stop sweating on his forehead, clearly, he was experiencing low blood sugar. A strong sense of hunger welled up, making him feel like he could eat eight ounces of rice right now.
Yet an hour ago, he had just finished a substantial bowl of beef noodles,
and had been supplementing with a bottle of slightly sugary electrolyte water for energy.
Unexpectedly, running just ten kilometers made him hungry again.
"After stretching, I'll find a street snack store for a meal."
While Wang Ye was resting and stretching in place.
His phone suddenly vibrated slightly in his pocket.
Beep beep.
He took out his phone only to find that the young man named Ye Yunyan, who added him as a friend yesterday, was mentioning him in the Longjiang District running group chat.
Curious, Wang Ye opened the chat group to see the conversation.
He discovered that someone had recorded a video of him running just now and posted it in the group.
In the video, Wang Ye was running steadily along the riverside track, his running posture and rhythm visibly professional, each step seemingly effortless.
Within seconds, his silhouette vanished outside the camera's frame, indicating the speed at which he was running.