Pebble Wrestling

Today I discovered how much more time I have when I am not training. I did a few things around the house and then went out to explore a new bouldering area. This involved tramping around in the bush, marking boulder locations on my map and photographing some of the more promising ones so I can remember where they are when I come back with the accoutrements of the Pebble Wrestler.

When I got home, just before it started raining in earnest - how is that for timing? - I still had all afternoon to get more stuff done. I wonder if the time it takes maintaining basic human function in the modern world is why so few people do so? I don't think time constraints are the pre-eminent reason, however. Even with a limited time you can do a lot better than the average Australian. Like most issues, the solution is both startlingly simple and complex at the same time.

Bench Mark Measures

 I like the idea of bench mark performance measures that you test every year or so - maybe more often, maybe less - but frequently enough that if your performance has fallen off a cliff, it is not too late to do something about it. The year we left Nelson (2012), we skinned up Summit Side of Ymir Mountain (about 400 metres) in 40 minutes which was pretty much exactly the time it had taken us to skin up when we first moved to Nelson a decade before. I remember the last time we did that, it would have been spring 2012, feeling pretty chuffed that over a decade I had maintained at least that level of power endurance.

There are literally dozens of bench mark metrics you could use, like lifting a sea kayak onto the roof of your car, climbing a certain route or boulder problem that is near your hardest grade, running your favourite trail in the same time as you did last year, squatting a certain weight, I could go on and on. The idea is to choose one or preferably more bench mark measures and test them occasionally. If you are still meeting your bench mark measures, carry on, if not, tweak something in your nutrition or training program. If you don't train, start. Exercise is a wonderful thing but will never replace training.

P.C. H. Mutch

Mark Anderson (one half of the well known rock climbing Anderson brothers and author of The Rock Climbers Training Manual) writes "if you want to be as good as everyone else do what everyone else does. If you want to be better than that, you have to do something different." Most people watch their performance degrade as they age and do nothing about it, writing off sarcopenia, changing body composition, weakness, loss of fitness and strength as a natural adjutant to aging. Don't be like them.

Deload Week

We went rock climbing today. I was tired. The last week or two I have felt the building fatigue that marks all intense training cycles. I knew it was time for a deload week, but I just kept hoping (note to readers, wishing and hoping never actually works) I could get through this weeks planned training sessions. But I was a saggy bag of bones most of the day and it became obvious that further training without adequate recovery would be counter productive.

Deload week has arrived a day early. Gentle reminder, it is day 17.

Magical Montague Island

Today me and the lads paddled out to Montague Island.  After days of strong off-shore winds we had amazing conditions with calm seas, seals and eagles galore.  A single whale and two off-course turtles were also spotted.  The female paddling contingent continues to shrink.  

Black Swan

This post will have more photos than usual as I remembered to take my camera with me. We were supposed to be rock climbing today but it is really windy and being fairly static in the forest under big burnt trees made rock climbing seem safe.

Early morning, instead, I rode my bicycle along our sea-side shared pathway and over the new bridge where there is a grand view of Snapper and the Tollgate Islands. Continuing along the foreshore, I rode along to Cullendulla where the tide was low enough to ride the boardwalk loop along the beach. As the climate changes, the beach here is changing too. The first layer of trees have all fallen down as the sea rises and the second layer now has exposed tree roots so another storm surge or high tide will take all those trees down as well. Development on land that will be inundated is, in typical short-sighted human fashion, still allowed. I guess all the people who thought that was a good idea figured they would have their own cash out by then.

There was no-one about and not even a single set of foot-prints on the sand since the tide had been in and out. A couple of black swans were floating close in shore. When we are all tempted to proclaim "the science is settled" we should remember the story of the Black Swan.

The Cullendulla area is the site of many mini-adventures. From riding waves at the mouth of the bay when there is a big southeasterly swell running, to kayak rolling, paddling up Cullendulla Creek to the very end, and once I tried to swim across Cullendulla Creek to get onto the Square Head tracks. However, the channel is deeper than you might think and despite wading in and out at numerous spots without a dry bag for my gear, I was unable to get across.

Leave Wild Wild

Today was a home training day in my gym and on my climbing wall. It was get pumped training day, which is good, because I got pumped super quickly and was unable to push my minutes on the wall up as I had hoped. Just a gentle reminder that progress is not a linear process.

In other news, as the world grapples with climate change (extreme heat and forest fires in the Northern Hemisphere, damaging floods in Asia, dams in China bursting from intense rain, droughts and water shortages in the Middle East), a couple of guys want to bring skiing to a mountain that has never supported skiing in the past. Because, for sure, as we burn through our resources the best use we can make of our precious remaining wild country is to try to make snow in a warming climate using energy and water intensive practices.

Ben Lomond is a great place to go bush-walking and currently IS a year round bush-walking and rock climbing destination. Why not leave it that way?

Doing The Little Things

Day 14, a two week streak of one blog post, no matter how short, every day and I am almost 50% of the way to my goal of one continuous month of blog posts. The last sentence is filler, pure filler, because I was out all day again working on the project, 7.00 am to 5.00 pm and my brain has turned to dust, plus I still have to do my accessory and core exercises.

Nothing worth having comes easy, however, which is apparently attributable to Theodore Roosevelte, and a good maxim to live by because self discipline, self control, reliability, these are all character attributes that require practice to maintain. If you can't follow through on the little things, you really have no business tackling the big things.

Tea Trees and Deadpoints

The best video I have found, of course it is Neil Gresham, explaining deadpoints and how to practice and train them. One video tutorial mentioned moving from the hips while keeping your ankles still and I wanted to shout at the videographer that "the body is one piece." Unless your ankle is fused it is impossible to move from the hips while not moving the ankles, because, the body is one piece, or, following KStarr, think upstream/downstream.

I have set a few deadpoint projects on my home wall to practice when I am not working my actual project. No matter how I tried I could not extend for holds while keeping my ankles fixed. I did, however, intuitively work out that I needed to press through the feet as I went for the deadpoint which is how Neil Gresham instructs the deadpoint.

I had a long ramble around the bush and beaches in our local area today. Although our development happy council is more than willing to sell off green space, we are still very lucky to have long corridors of reserve that can be connected to make circle or out and back routes linking bush and beaches with very little pavement walking.

Today I rambled through a lovely tea tree forest and came out on a wide flat beach at low tide with views of our bay and islands.

Outsourcing

I decided to outsource my core training plan to the Crimpd app. For months I have been trying to get into a routine of training my core everyday - following the dictum that if something is important "do it every day." If it is an "at home" day, I have no trouble getting my daily core training done as, another of my standard practices is "if it is important do it early." But, if I come home tired, filthy and hungry, like yesterday, suddenly all those standard practices go out the window.

Although the research is inconclusive, most of us have experienced will power fatigue. One way to prevent the insidious weeping away of our determination to follow through on our resolutions is to off-load the will power required to follow through with our plans and resolutions to someone or something else. Hence, the time tested "workout buddy."

The beauty of the Crimpd app is I turn it on, choose from one of several core routines and simply follow the instructions. So far it has worked a treat, and that is a wrap on day 11.

Avoiding Instant Gratification

It takes some mental effort to get this blog out every day (today is day 11 of what I hope will be a 30 day streak) after I have been out all day. Today was work on the project day which meant I left home at just after 7.00 am and got back at 5.00 pm, hungry and filthy. As an adult, I, of course, had dinner ready to go, because adults should eat like adults. I would argue that children should also eat like adults but that is moving beyond catchy memes and more than I have time  for if I am to get this blog out on schedule.

Many times in life you have to suck up a whole lot of hard work, hunger and filth to end up with something you can be proud of and that gives you endless days of joy. This is the essence of making decisions based on third order effects instead of the instant gratification of first order effects.

Deadpoint

Day 10 that must be some kind of mile-stone. What a glorious winter day. We had frost on the garden but at our local climbing area it was T shirt weather in the sun. I was hopeful of sending my project, and, for a brief moment, as brief as the arc at the top of a deadpoint, I thought "I've done it, I've bloody done it." And then my foot popped.

Contradiction

 "...man's unlimited capacity for thinking contradictory thoughts, without even making a feeble attempt to become aware of the contradiction." Eric Fromm, The Sane Society (1956).

Today's training session was, following Dan John's Easy Strength format, six singles increasing the weight/difficulty each set but, also following the precepts of Easy Strength, always make the lift. If I had a favourite day of Easy Strength it would be the six singles day because you feel like a hero. Who does not feel like a strong (wo)man doing pushups with their feet elevated on a bench?

After that, I took a spin on my bike along our paved sea-side bicycling track to the Post Office to mail my rock shoes off for a resole. I must have been climbing more than I think, or I could be climbing worse than I think, but my shoes are almost down to the last. It was a glorious winter day with clear air and brilliant blue sky. Out at sea, however, it was blowing and lumpy looking.

I also called in at the chemist to get some 1% hyrdocortisone cream. As I spend way too much time thrashing around in the bush, I am always getting minor skin irritations from spiny/spiky/toxic plants because I also spend way too much time in shorts thrashing around in the bush. Every time I buy a tube of this cream I get asked 20 questions: "Have you used this before, what are you using it for, how much do you use per day....." and on it goes. I try to patient with these questions as I am pretty sure the shop assistant would be happy enough to fling me a tube and get on with his/her day, but they are obviously mandated by some anonymous professional body to ask these questions.

But really, is anyone mainlining hydrocortisone cream? Can it be mixed in a spoon, heated and injected to give the ultimate addicting high? Is it an essential ingredient in crack cocaine? Hydrocortisone is a steroid, but not an anabolic steroid so even if I lathered my body in hydrocortisone cream day and night I could not reasonably expect to get instantly jacked and win the Ms Universe Competition: Older Athletes Edition. In fact, absorption rates of topical hydrocortisone are under 2%, so the chances of me using enough to develop some sort of Cushing Syndrome are so low as to be inestimable.

However, should I go into any grocery/convenience/food store in Australia and buy a shopping cart full of ultra-processed food no-one will blink, and I certainly will not be asked any questions. In fact, a shopping cart full of junk food is a routine purchase. Why are we not asking 20 questions, such as "Do you understand that consumption of these foods will result in diabetes, alzheimers disease, cardiovascular complications, reduced life-span, significant comorbidity?, Are you insulin resistant? Hypertensive? Have high triglycerides? Have metabolic syndrome? Do you intend to eat all this food yourself? How much exercise are you doing and of what type?"

These would all be reasonable questions to ask before we allow someone to ingest items with known toxicity. But that would be rational, and man is an irrational species.  

Yellow Tailed Black Cockatoo

It was Yellow-tailed Black Cockatoo day today. I spent seven hours working on my project in the depths of the woods and, coming back up the hill at the end of the day the wind, which had been quite strong when I entered the forest, had diminished and the air was filled with a strange squeaking sound. Initially, I thought it was light wind blowing the eucalpyts about but it was a flock of around 20 Yellow-tailed Black Cockatoos which were digging into the burnt tops of the gum trees with their sharp beaks.

I am trying to get stronger on overhanging routes so even though I was a wee bitty tired after a long day out, I did my usual core exercises and I,Y,T on the TRX clone. And that is a wrap on day eight.

Irrationality

Well it is day seven, an entire week into my goal of writing something every day for a month. But it is also the first day that I changed up my climbing training under my new six week plan. This entire thing is getting confusing, because I am at seven days of continuous blogging but only two days into my new six week training program, and the first day that I changed my climbing training. Unravel that if you can.

The goal of this session was to get pumped by climbing a series of circuits with minimal rests. Check that goal. Today, also, was the first day in seven I did not get my nature fix. I had a bunch of errands in town and by the time I had checked off all my chores and training for the day I had run out of time. Speaking of town, I can't believe I am the only person who thinks we have got to some end stage of irrationality when we are all walking around wearing masks while ignoring the tsunami of real public health problems that are drowning modern societies.

Anything Works

Day six and coincidentally the start of a my new six week training phase. If I had another six to add that would be the sign of the devil and surely not a good thing. It is axiomatic that if you are untrained anything works (which is why so many poorly designed exercise science studies show benefit), and if you are trained, anything works until it doesn't. Training, in fact, is full of axiomatic principles, such as the Pareto Principle (20% effort brings 80% of the gains), the body is one piece, and the body adapts.

Right there I have just listed off four self-evident principles that would project you to higher and higher levels of performance if you integrated them all into your training. Which would, of course, mean changing your training on a regular basis. Not so frequent that no gains are recognised, but frequently enough to force the body to continue the process of adaptation.

I am currently at the place where "how I got here won't get me there." I've done the 20% for the 80%, the body has adapted, and it is time to train differently to continue adaptation.

This morning I woke up a bit stiff and sore, the way you do after a hard day out, my fingers, in particular are stiff because yesterday involved a full day out climbing rocks, scrambling around, and hauling a very heavy pack up and down a slippery steep hill.

A Tale Of Two Cruxes

Day five seemed like a good morning to catch sunrise and scramble around the rocks from my home beach for few hours. With the recent westerly winds, there was barely any swell and our bay was about as calm as I have seen it. Quite a change from a week ago when Splashalot, Doug and I paddled out of Caseys Beach with a five metre swell measured on the Batemans Bay wave buoy. It was big, felt huge, as the kayaks pulled up and over the waves. There was a brisk southerly wind too so we had sea on top of swell which made for what Splashalot calls "interesting conditions" and I call mildly anxiety provoking. Getting back into Caseys Beach, well, that was a thing, but we survived.

But that was a week ago, and this is day five. There are two modestly tricky bits scrambling south from our home bay where you need to either jump in the sea and swim or go around at dead low tide. As the waves crash onto the rocks, I would not recommend jumping into the sea but I have also tried to get around at a high low tide and a low tide with a big swell and not made the two crux sections of the rock scramble.

Climbers will know what a crux is, but, if you are not a climber, the crux is the most difficult part of the route. I like to say, when I am climbing our new project that "once you do all the hard climbing, then comes the crux" because the route has two distinct cruxes separated by sections of sustained climbing. It's not very funny, but it helps to laugh when you are trying hard.

It was a pretty regular low tide today so I had no trouble getting around the two crux sections and onto easy beach walking.

Garbage In, Garbage Out

Day four and writing something every day is harder than I thought, particularly because I write about yesterday today which a little Seussian because I actually have to remember back to the penultimate day before yesterday because that influenced yesterday. Whew.

Best avoid any confusion by calling yesterday day four, and, with stiff fingers from the penultimate day before yesterday - climbing at Nowra - I skipped my normal wall climbing session which I usually intersperse with easy strength, and simply did easy strength, core, accessory work and a very pleasant low tide walk around the rock platforms and beaches in my neighbourhood.

Whenever I walk around my neighbourhood I carry a garbage bag and pick up trash as I go. There is always much more litter around school holiday time when the tourists come into town and throw their garbage about; it's not as if they live here or anything. It's not school holidays right now but I scrambled up some rocks to a "new lookout" area that council has signed in an effort to increase tourism. The lookout was always there, it is just that there is now a big blue tourist sign indicating where to turn off the main road.

Before the new council signage, there was a little bit of trash around the lookout but with the sign up there is masses of trash. Almost all of the litter is from junk food and beverage containers. I filled a large garbage bag just at the car park. Garbage in, garbage out as the expression runs. There are two things I always think about this. One is that fast food providers should be paying some kind of environmental levy because all their packaging inevitably ends up littering the country side and must be dealt with by the public; another example of capitalism privatising the gains while the public subsidises the losses. The second issue I wonder about is whether there is a strong correlation, possibly even a causation between people who are willing to pollute their bodies with sugar, industrial seed oil and pesticide drenched wheat products (the basic building blocks of junk food/drink) and being happy to pollute public spaces. Certainly, I don't see any "pride of ownership" in either ruining your health or our public spaces.

All Up And Then Down

Day three and performance day back on the steep, fingery routes at Nowra. This sort of climbing certainly does not play to my strengths. As far as I have any strengths, I do better on balancy slabs. This is probably the same for many small females. It was a bit off-putting slipping off the first route three times before I passed the first clip but it was all up from there ... until it was down. By the end of the day we were both pretty worked but that is part of the goal climbing at Nowra: get worked and have fun. Checked on both counts.

Run, Walk, Jog

Day two and already this habit feels onerous; not really, it would be a poor showing to quit after one day, although, as Seth Godin argues in "The Dip" sometimes quitting is the right thing to do. Pivoting is what the new breed of pretenders would say, which is revisionist history for quitting.

Actually, it is an easy day to write about as it was an easy day because tomorrow is performance day. All this talk about performance is going to make me anxious to perform tomorrow. Redpoint/onsight anxiety, the struggle is real.

Anyway, I went off to run/walk/jog some single track in the local forest that I had not yet got around to exploring, mostly because I have been in a strength and power phase not an endurance phase. So, it was a nice two hour run/walk/jog staying well within my aerobic threshold (recovery pace) past some lovely big gum trees that weathered the 2019 fire storm, and along beside granite slab creeks. There were a few black cockatoos screeching in the trees, such intriguing birds, and I got my daily dose of nature.

Habits, Tapering and Single Track

NSW is back into Covid lockdown so you think I would have time to write up all the festering blog posts that have been sitting on my to do list for a few months. Well, you'd be wrong. I don't do sitting well, and I can pretty much always find something else to do besides sitting inside composing wordy blogs and sorting through photos to illustrate my adventures.

In lieu of ever catching up, I thought I would, for a month or so, post my daily outings/training/wanderings through the natural world with the idea that a few words is easier to pen than a long form essay, and forming a habit is the key to success.

Thursday is climbing day and, because I am old and weak, which is divergent from when I was young and weak, I taper my climbing training for my "performance" days. So, this morning was my usual core routine, plus TRX I,Y,T, because smarter people than me recommend these for posture, and shoulder health. But no climbing on my home wall or bouldering at my local beach.

Tapering does not mean nothing, however, so I did my interval training, which is important as you get older because while we old folks can hold onto endurance we tend to lose power. I do my interval training on my mountain bike riding the local single track because the trails are alternating steep up and down. I have to work hard to get up the loose steep hills and, as I view having to push the bike as a type of failure, I work way harder than I would if I went out and sprinted hills. Simply put, the bike stalls out if my power is inadequate.

Anyway, I had a fantastic lap around the trails totting up over 500 metres of elevation gain which is not bad in a distance of 19 kilometres given the minimal prominence of our surrounding hills. As I was speeding down the gravel road at the end of my ride I was thinking that given the choice of a SAD (standard Australian diet) of hyperpalatable food or feeling invincible, I choose feeling invincible.

Lift Off

Two images snatched from a video taken paddling out to the Tollgate Islands today with HMax (maximum wave height) on the Batemans Bay Wave Rider Bouy at 5.00 metres, and average wave height 3.3 metres, 12 second period.  Interesting conditions as Splashalot would say. 

Hold Fast Or Get Worked

The beginning of the month marks the arrival of my favourite email newsletter from Steve Bechtel at Climb Strong: "the world's best source for climbing coaching and training information." I don't know if the coaches at Climb Strong are the best in the world - that's a pretty ballsy claim - but of all the climbing coaches that have sprung up in the last few years (in these Covid times it seems like everyone is either a climbing coach or host of a podcast), Steve Bechtel, who has been around for decades, makes the most sense to me. Bechtel is to climbing training what Dan John is to strength and conditioning: the wise old man who has seen it all before, knows empirically what works, what doesn't and isn't fooled by the next latest thing.

Coincidentally, the July newsletter (you can sign up for free at Climb Strong) arrived on the first of July, just as Doug and I were heading out to climb at Nowra. Apart from one very brief trip in 2020 (I climbed a grand total of two routes), it has been three years since I climbed at Nowra, which as every older climber knows is a veritable life-time. Nowra is known for steep walls, ring bolts and sandstone slopers. There are not that many routes in the easier grades, but lots and lots of routes for grade 20 and up crushers. Every time I climb at Nowra I get worked. The question was, how worked would I get this time?

A lot less than previous visits, I was hoping. I had lost 10 kilograms, a significant amount in a weight dependent sport, was bouldering, climbing weekly, training on my home wall, and strength training. In deference to building strength and power I had dialled way back on all my long endurance events, not having gone on any of my long rambling runs since we returned from South Australia. Younger folk can run, climb, strength train and bounce back with alacrity but, for older athletes, balancing recovery with training and performance requires walking a much finer line.

Every real athlete knows there is a big difference between exercising and training. Exercising, which is what most people do, may - or may not, depending on how hard you work - make you fatigued, sore and sweaty, but training makes you better. Or at least it should, done right. If performance does not improve, training is merely exercising. Nothing inherently wrong with that but as a goal and performance oriented individual, I want my training to work.

At the small climbing area close to where I live, I was climbing better, much better. I had "sent" two routes that previously defied me (I mean really defied me as I could not even get off the ground) and I am currently working another hard route. I was tentatively beginning to believe that my training was working.

Climbing routes you know well, however, is one thing, climbing unfamiliar routes on a different type of rock is another. The real test for me was whether I could climb better at Nowra than I had in years gone by. Not a big goal for youth, but for someone much closer to 60 than 50, improving is a quantum leap beyond simply maintaining.

And I did! By the end of the day I was pretty worked, but in a good way; tired but stoked, realising that all the meat, vegetables, lifting, bouldering, core circuits at the local playground was all worth it. Psyched to read Bechtel's latest training missive, plan out a new training block, and climb even better next time.

As Bechtel says, Hold Fast.