Perfectionism, Paddling and Climbing

In one of those weird personality quirks I can be both a perfectionist yet simultaneously hold to a “rough enough is good enough” doctrine. Lately, I’ve started to think that framing is everything. A healthy diet that avoids sugar, grains and industrial seed oils can be seen as either restrictive or freeing. Sure, 99.9% of packaged goods will be off limits, but not succumbing to the diseases of civilisation, infirmity and general weakness is a sign of incredible freedom.

Pic by Quick Nick

I am still obsessed with climbing although I’ve only managed to get out about once per week the last couple of weeks. We had another round of wet weather, and, with a paddle trip coming up, it’s time to get back into paddle shape. I seem to be fit enough to stay in shape for easy paddle trips with no special preparation but bigger trips, I like to feel fit enough that I can stack up long days back to back.

Paddle training is mostly grinding zone two stuff with the occasional session chasing Quick Nick thrown in to increase overall speed. Not glamorous, and truthfully, most days I just go out to get it done, but much of success in life lies in just getting shit done.

Living The Conspiracy Times

The sea and sky are both gunmetal grey and a gusty southwest wind is blowing. The wave buoy is showing a two metre southeasterly swell with an average six second period. I have paddled out of this bay so many times, I know what to expect. We will be relatively sheltered until we reach the headland and reefs south of tiny Circuit Beach. Beyond there, conditions will gradually build, the sea and swell getting larger and more confused, the wind blowing spray off the wave tops and into our faces, clapotis and rebound will make the sea lively and unstable. Already, I can see a line of breakers along the reefs near to Black Rock and we are still a kilometre away.

I rarely go out to sea in my small kayak without feeling a frisson that is half fear, half expectation. Without the challenge of the changeable sea, ocean kayaking would be a dull sport, like always climbing easy routes or skiing groomed runs at a ski hill. The joy is in the challenge of the unexpected. Although I know this coastline well: where you can stay close inshore, where there are a half-hidden bommies, where the currents run fast, this is still open ocean and oceans, like mountains are places uncontrolled by man.

As the developed world once again descends into ‘rona madness it is interesting to think about how well the post-modern world assesses risk. Risk is something I think I know a reasonable amount about. After all, I have survived multiple decades engaged in risky sports like mountaineering, backcountry skiing, climbing, ocean kayaking. I have been caught in snow avalanches, been hit by rockfall while climbing, had my gear fall out on long traditional climbs, slipped on snow slopes, skied for four days without food trying to escape an epic avalanche cycle, been rescued off a mountain top. I have had friends injured and even killed in climbing and skiing accidents. You could almost say if it could go wrong, it has gone wrong.

Whether you are climbing a big mountain or paddling across Bass Strait, decisions have real and immediate consequences. At the other end of the spectrum, we rarely make decisions in the modern world that have immediate consequences, and developed societies, like Australia – with strong social safety nets and what might generously be called a “nanny state” – have developed the idea of moral hazard to its illogical conclusion. There is almost no consequence for poor decision making.

Australians have notoriously shitty diets and most do inadequate to no reasonable exercise¹. Exercise and nutrition are choices everyone makes everyday of their lives with real consequences in terms of death (mortality) and disability (morbidity), yet most happily continue to engage in what I would consider high risk activities (poor diet and sedentary behaviour) because the deleterious outcome (chronic disease and disability) is so far removed from the action (occurring up to decades later) that the conscious mind makes no connection between the two.

Unfortunately, at this point in time, the onus is on the individual to make reasonable decisions that fully anticipate the consequences of those decisions. We live in spectacularly unhealthy environments, with an increasing preponderance of public funding and discourse going towards a problem that is minuscule in comparison to the real health issues we face. Fear porn is everywhere as is misinformation, censorship, outright corruption. Our public health agencies have been completely captured by Big Food and Big Pharma. A highly effective money making machine that creates preventable illness and then sells expensive and ineffective remedies with rafts of side effects. It is much easier to line up for the autumn, winter, spring, summer … booster than it is to stand back and assess real risk and make an appropriate decision.

Two decades ago when I titled my blog “The Conspiracy Times” I had no idea I would be living the reality.

1Bearing in mind that official dietary and exercise guidelines are a pretty low bar and will barely fend of morbidity and mortality from the diseases of civilisation.

Try Hard

“As I look back on today, what did I do that was actually worth my time?” Susan David. Emotional Agility.

Forty years ago, during that pensive phase that all young people go through I used to copy out quotes from books onto scraps of paper and into various note-books (no-one had personal computers back then – I don’t think PC’s had even been invented). Over time, I stopped the practice thinking, with the hubris of all humanity, that I would remember the quote; plus, all those notebooks and scraps of paper got lost somewhere along the way, moving from one place to another or the scraps of paper got glanced at and tossed into the bin thinking “why did I think that quote was so enlightening?’

Last night, as I lay reading in bed, I turned back the page of the book thinking, I must remember that quote, and so, I present it here for your consideration. Did you do something today that was worth your time? I had a fantastic day out climbing and I feel like just about every thing I did today was worth my time, from meditating in the morning, to pumping out on a hard route, right through to cooking fish and potatoes for dinner.

From this mornings walk

Like all rock climbers, I am perennially discontented. Is there a single rock climber out there who does not go out climbing with big dreams of sending hard but making the send look effortless? I don’t think so. As recently as a couple of weeks ago, I would go out with this tick list of must climb routes for the day that I must climb in perfect style and my chattering mind would run along like a Jack Russel chasing a ferret all day driving me batty with do this, don’t do that lists of tactics and strategies. “Don’t clip early,” “don’t overgrip,” “try not to bump your feet up,” “rock on and transfer your weight.” It was endless, exhausting, and I could never live up to all the regulations I had boxed around the climbs. Falling off, rather than being a symbol of trying hard became another marker of failure.

Another from this morning, infrequently seen here

One morning, it suddenly occurred to me that all I really needed to do to have a successful day was try hard. I might muff up a sequence, I might fumble a clip, I might fall off, but if I tried hard, the climb and the day was a success. When you disengage yourself from achieving a certain predetermined outcome, and just focus on trying hard – at whatever you are doing – looking back on the day and finding at least one thing that was worth your time is almost guaranteed.

Crossing The Rubicon

Two weeks since my last entry bemoaning the tweak. I know I have been doing “stuff,” but what exactly? Multiple times I sat down to write something, anything, and just could not get started, or, if I got started I could not finish. Like everyone else, I have an ever shrinking attention span courtesy of our sound bite age, and exacerbated by the idea that acquiring one last piece of riveting information will make a huge difference in everything? or nothing?

Booroomba Rocks, ACT

Emotional Agility: Get Unstuck, Embrace Change, and Thrive in Work and Life by Susan David is the book I am reading right now. First off, I’d like to know why authors, or perhaps it is editors, insist on putting the thesis of the book, preceded by a colon, after a pleasingly short and pithy title: which is where the title should stop. Leave some mystery for the reader.

Climbing the three dimensional, Groove Thang, Smith Rock, OR

If you have any emotional agility, certainly not a guarantee, there won’t be much new in the book, but it is an easy and engaging read. Surprisingly, as I have got older, I have got more agile in my thinking. As a youth, I found it very hard to change gears if things were not turning out exactly as I had planned. Waking up to a full on blizzard on a day I had planned to go climb the South Ridge of Gimli Peak would send me into a tizzy of indecision: obviously a 12 pitch alpine climb was out of the question, but should I head out skiing? Or to the climbing gym? Perhaps get on my home wall? Hours could pass while I dithered about.

Running downwind, PC: Quick Nick

Today it is really blowing a gale. The gale that the weather office has been threatening for a few days. It warmed up dramatically overnight but apparently, a cold front is crossing the southern part of NSW, hence the near 100 km/hour winds. I got out onto the trails before the wind got too strong.

Single track in the local forests

The tweak is really improving. On Thursday we went climbing and Saturday we went paddling. Of course, I wanted to train on Friday, but I was tired and sore from climbing, and wanted a solid training day in the kayak on Saturday; so I had to settle for a half dozen kilometres out on the bush tracks doing easy endurance work, instead of circuits in the gym and on my climbing wall. The most important physical skill that age has robbed me of is the ability to stack up high intensity days back to back. Some days, it feels like the person who climbed or skied 6 or 7 days in a row was another being entirely.

High up in the Selkirk Mountains, BC

We all feel immortal when young, but age comes quickly, far too quickly. One day, we wake up and, even if we have been lucky enough to hang on to the mental drive – and few do – the body does not keep it’s end of the bargain, requiring more time, more care, more rehab and prehab, better nutrition, more sleep, less frequent intensity, more frequent recovery. In essence, the body becomes a petulant child who will only accede to the mind’s desires if coddled and cossetted.

High camp in the Bugaboos, BC

As age propels me onward, I realise how one dimensional most of my life has been. While not a gifted athlete, I have been, and continue to be a driven athlete, apart from a few select people, my life has been entirely about the next climb, ski trip, kayak trip, bushwalk, off-track adventure. Most other people I know have something else, some other hobby or interest. Art, music, volunteering, gardening, something else that takes up the space in life that is not associated with pushing farther, faster, harder. This must be a comfort when pushing farther, faster, harder is no longer possible and just treading water becomes a victory. Next year I turn 60 and it certainly feels as if the crossing of the Rubicon will come too soon.

Rest And Recover

“How long have you had this?” says my health care provider. The lie drips easily off my tongue, “Oh, a couple of weeks.” At the time, I did not actually know how long my shoulder had felt “jacked up,” but I knew it was more than 14 days. It was not until yesterday when I finally looked back through my training logs and noted that I had reduced my press weight on the right due to a “tweaky shoulder” in mid-May that my shoulder had been jacked up for about six weeks. If you are a climber, kayaker, any kind of athlete, you’ve had more “tweaks” over the years than you have had injury free seasons, and, although the first rule of training is “don’t get injured,” we all get injured, despite our best intentions.

As usual, I was more concerned with losing strength than healing a tweak and for six weeks I trained and climbed through the injury, albeit using much less weight for strength training but continuing to climb three times a week. Of course, what works when you are 28, works much less well when you are 59, and last week I finally took myself off to get my shoulder worked on, and heeded my providers advice to “not train until we get the mobility back.” So easy to say, so hard to do. Ringing through my head are the results of this study, which showed that older adults on bed rest lost near 10% of their leg strength over 10 days. I can’t afford that, at my age, I don’t have enough years left in me to rebuild.

We climbed on Wednesday, a day before the rains were forecast, and, for the first time, I could not climb without pain indicating that my minor tweak had, rather than healing, got a whole lot worse. For someone who believes in taking the long view towards training, I sure can get obsessed with the short view. Of course, training with injury is possible, just not the way I was training. Lots of studies have shown that continued to train the unaffected limb provides some strength stimulus to the affected limb, and, of course, as Dan John says “the body is one piece.”