wshaffer

Took my nephews climbing yesterday at The Peak of Fremont with some friends of mine and their kids. The Peak is a pretty cool little climbing gym - notably, it has 9 auto-belay routes, which is handy if you're short of belayers. (We had 6 kids and 5 adults, two of whom could belay, so the auto-belay was kind of a necessity.)

I think the nephews had a good time with the other kids, even if they were occasionally impatient at having to share Aunt Wendy's belaying services with other people.

Younger nephew very sweetly tried to console a 4-year old who was disconsolate because she couldn't manage a 5.11 route: "When you're big like me, you'll climb that with no problem!"

After climbing, we took the kids to a nearby pizza place. The boys were initially not keen on pizza, but when I explained to them that they could get a personal pizza and pick any topping they wanted, they got very excited. Older nephew chose tomato sauce, pepperoni, and cheese. Younger nephew chose tomato sauce and cheese.

Older nephew was very impressed that I had a booster seat in the trunk of my car for his brother.
Older nephew: Do you just keep that there just in case?
Me: Yeah. Do you remember that time I drove you a few blocks in my car and I didn't have any booster seats? I felt bad about that.
Younger nephew: Why?
Me: Well, because I want you to be safe and comfortable in my car.*
Older nephew: And besides, you don't want to break the law.
Me: Well, yeah, I guess not.
Older nephew: When I break the law, I feel bad. It makes me sick to my stomach.

I was too busy getting Younger nephew settled into his seat to inquire about what sort of life of crime Older nephew thinks he's been living. I do think this conversation demonstrates that Older nephew is Lawful Good alignment whereas Younger nephew is definitely Neutral Good.

Older nephew also described to me with great interest the political coverage he'd been reading in that morning's New York Times. He's passionately interested in the presidential election campaign. Perhaps we ought to just give nine year olds the vote.

*Actually, it was also that Younger nephew slouched down in his seat and proudly proclaimed, "The police won't be able to see me!" I wasn't sure if I was fostering the correct respect towards law and order.

Went bouldering with the nephews earlier today. Younger Nephew wasn't really into it - I think his favorite part of the whole event might have been the unaccustomed treat of getting to choose a beverage from Planet Granite's fridge. (Thankfully, all he wanted was a Limonata. If he'd set his heart on one of their weird energy drinks, we'd have had to have the "Oh, I may be Aunt Pushover, but even I'm not cruel enough to wire you up on sugar and caffeine and hand you back to your parents" conversation.) Older Nephew had fun, and wants to try top-rope climbing now.

I did put on my climbing shoes and try to scramble up an easy route myself. I still suck at bouldering, and my left shoulder is still not quite as strong or flexible as my right, but it wasn't a complete disaster.

Had a relatively good climbing night last night, despite being a bit tired and headachy from allergies, and despite Planet Granite being the most crowded I'd ever seen it. I climbed a 5.6 that was overhangy, then slabby, then overhangy again, and which had utterly defeated me when I tried it a few weeks ago. I flailed around on a 5.7 a bit, and then climbed the World's Hardest 5.5. Seriously, this thing was weird - it had a weird balancy start, with big but awkward handholds, and then there were a couple of places on the way up where I had to just take enormous (for me) steps. The person who set that route has an evil mind, and I like them. I want to go back some time when I have more energy and climb it a few times in a row just to see if I can figure out what makes it tick.

After that I messed around a bit on the lower reaches of some 5.6's and 5.7's, and then called it a night.

So, when it comes to climbing, my toes have always been my Achilles heel* (er, so to speak). I tend not to point my toes properly and put too much weight on the ball of my foot, which means that by the end of a climbing session, the base of my big toe is sore.

I had hopes that getting my own pair of climbing shoes (rather than the rental ones I've been using) would remedy this. And it sort of did. My new shoes squish the toes together a bit and really force the foot into proper alignment. The ball of my foot didn't hurt at all as I climbed tonight. However, my toes, not used to bearing the brunt of all my climbing, were in a lot of pain - enough so that that was basically the limiting factor in my climbs. I'd come down off a wall when I couldn't bear the thought of putting weight on my feet anymore.

Now that I'm home and back in normal shoes, my feet feel fine. I think it's just a combination of my needing to break in the shoes, and my feet needing to adjust to the demands of this different mode of climbing. I'll give it some more sessions to adjust, and if it doesn't get better, I'll go to Planet Granite's shop and ask them to help me find some non-painful shoes.

* Well, apart from my other Achilles heels like poor flexibility, lack of upper body strength, and a mild fear of heights. Yet, somehow, I love this sport.

Since I had a number of spectacularly good climbing sessions in October, the law of averages probably meant that I was due for a crummy one, especially after having taken a few weeks off. I showed up at the climbing gym last night, but my strength and stamina mostly didn't. I completely failed to get more than the first few holds on a 5.8, climbed a 5.6 handily, struggled partway up a couple of 5.7's, and finally decided to call it a night when I was repeatedly defeated by what should have been an easy move on a 5.5.

Despite my distinctly subpar performance, it was fun to get back on the climbing wall and see folks. I'll try again next week, hopefully when I'm a bit better rested.

One of the more entertaining chapters in Alex Hutchinson's book, Which Comes First, Cardio or Weights? is his chapter on the effect of music on athletic performance. There actually is some evidence that listening to music while exercising can reduce the level of perceived exertion, and therefore help you go longer/lift heavier/whatever. What I found particularly interesting was that different types of music were better for different activities: for aerobic activities such as running or biking, a steady, fast beat was most beneficial to performance, whereas for weight lifting, "motivational lyrics" seemed to have the most effect.

I have a couple of playlists for running, and a playlist for weightlifting. I even have a kind of a playlist for climbing - you can't really use an iPod while climbing, but I often hear music in my head when I'm on a particularly tricky bit of wall. (Once in a while, Planet Granite obliges me by playing one of my climbing songs outside my head.) Climbing songs have a lot in common with weightlifting songs, except that they have a statistically significant lyrical focus on climbing, falling, or vertical movement, and are generally selected based on the Hollywood movie soundtrack principle that any death-defying move done to the accompaniment of a sufficiently badass guitar riff has to succeed.

So, I thought it would be fun to post a song from each of my playlists.
( Cut because I've already taken up enough of your flist with my blathering )

Do have a favorite workout song? Post a link in the comments.

Went climbing last night for the first time in a bit. I've sometimes wondered if part of the reason that climbing is so exhausting is that I often climb in the evening after doing a personal training session in the morning. But I postponed this week's personal training session to Friday, and I was still pretty wrecked by the time I was done last night.

Last night's biggest take home lesson: My instinct when climbing is to reach for my next handhold, pull myself up, and then look for the next place to move my foot up to. However, it frequently makes more sense to move a foot up to the next foothold, push up, and then reach for the next handhold.

Second lesson: I could use more endurance. Not so much in the basic just-keep-plodding-at-a-steady-pace sense, more in the sense of recovering more quickly after I've just done something requiring significant power. I should probably add more interval training into my workouts. (I think the next phase of the New Rules of Lifting for Women workout, which I'm due to start in a few weeks, includes some intervals.)

My left foot hurts quite a bit today, which means that I should probably postpone the run I'd planned to do today.

Went climbing again with some friends last night. I am in that wonderful beginner stage where each time I climb, I can do something that I couldn't the previous time. I wonder how long that will last.

Climbing is in some ways similar to chess, in that people who are good at it can recognize patterns on the wall/board, and visualize future moves. I'm just starting to be able to do that with climbing. I'm still generally only thinking a move or two ahead, and my more experienced climbing partners are still much better at looking at a hold and figuring out how best to use it. But it still makes a tremendous difference from my previous strategy of "grab the next thing within reach and hope like hell it gets you somewhere."

Some other observations:

I can actually do a personal training session in the morning and go climbing in the evening. It's probably not optimal from a climbing performance perspective, but there are certain advantages to climbing "pre-fatigued" - my arms were tired last night, so I practiced relying on my legs more, which is good strategy overall.

Part of the trick to completing a climb is to not expend all your energy getting halfway up. Particularly important - don't pause and think at a spot where you're hanging on with all your strength. Nothing makes one feel sillier than realizing that you know exactly what you need to do next, but you no longer have the grip strength to do it.

I definitely feel like I could use some more leg strength. Particularly when I've got one of my feet up so that my knee is bent and higher than my hip - sometimes what I really need to do is just drive upward, and sometimes I can't quite do it. Must do more squats.