Expert Opinion

Back in 2023, I thought I had written my last post on the ‘rona farce, but now, as 2024 enters its final quarter it seems to me that the deleterious effects of the ludicrously overblown response to a viral illness with a excruciatingly small infection fatality rate (IFR) continues to reverberate among the population. Memories, like the news cycle, are short, but, particularly in Australia, we should never forget the utter nuttiness of the rules and regulations that were introduced and enforced with literal military precision. Victoria was the most locked down state in the country, and spent almost an entire year under some form of draconian restriction or other including such mind-blowingly illogical restrictions as curfews between 8 pm and 5 am because everyone knows respiratory viruses are active, like possums, in the hours of darkness. Now, Victoria, the poster child of the authoritarian far left woke liberal class, is not only struggling to fund basic hospital services but also had the worst outcomes of any Australian state during the ‘rona years all due to the bloated budgets, wasteful spending of the ‘rona years and ultimately harmful lock-downs.

In the ACT, folks were allowed out of their homes for one hour of exercise per day either with one other family/household member or solo. It’s not an exaggeration to note that actual prisoners had more rights to exercise and outdoor space than the average Canberra resident during this time. Across the country gyms and outdoor playgrounds were closed, but, junk food and alcohol were both readily available, and I’m pretty sure somewhere some enterprising individual was delivering illegal drugs during the pandemic. Most tragic of all, many people died alone (not of ‘rona) as families were literally rent apart, spouse from spouse and parent from child. The sheer evil and incompetence of the politicians and health policy makers that endorsed and enforced these regulations should never be forgotten (or forgiven).

Domestic violence increased during the ‘rona years and, seemingly, an entire generation of children and adolescents developed mental health issues that have made school attendance problematic or impossible and also required hospital visits and even inpatient admissions. I’ll repeat again the cruelty of the public health officials and politicians during this time was unimaginable to me, and probably most thinking people, and, had I not lived through the ‘rona years, I would not have believed such malice possible. But, like the frog in boiling water, the population accepted each new restriction as they were dripped in bit by bit, along with massive public relations campaigns that promulgated an excess of fear and smeared critical voices as “anti-vaxers” or “cookers.” Derisive name calling is always far easier than rationality, logic and reasoned argument.

But all of this is somewhat abstract, what of our own small communities and friends and acquaintances? As a keen observer of human nature, a cooker, an anti-vaxer and a general maverick outsider, it has become more and more apparent to me that the fallout of the ‘rona debacle is both broad and deep. There are just too many folk with aggressive cancers, auto-immune, cardiovascular, and mental health conditions for my brain to not make connections. There are also all the other less dramatic but no less serious issues with reduced capacity and strength, increased obesity and even a vague but certain inability to tolerate differing opinions such that upset and moral outrage occurs if confronted with an opposing view no matter how benign. The former are literally life threatening, the latter although not immediately serious will have continued repercussions in reduced health span. 

Ironically, of course, neither Doug nor I have had the ‘rona, although we have had as many exposures as any other human yet we are still (in rare instances) treated not as fellow human beings but as vectors of disease. A reliance on personal observation and experience and a generous discounting of the validity of hysterical media reports allowed us to resist the pornography of fear and the society wide brain-washing with only minimal difficulty. Of course, we live very different life-styles from even the most active Australians. We eat copious amounts of animal flesh, large quantities of vegetables, a little fruit and nuts, but virtually no sugar, grains or industrial seed oils. We lift weights regularly, and engage equally in long endurance efforts and fast-paced power and strength based activities like rock climbing and mountain biking (no e-bike). In short, if the authorities warn against it, we do it. Again, I cannot help but make connections. Does a robust disregard for the advice of experts – the people who told you to tape your windows closed and hide indoors – lead to robust mental and physical health? It’s entirely possible.

When There Is No Where To Hide

There is a certain simplicity to “do or not do” sports. Like rolling a kayak, the outcome is clear. Either the kayak is upright, or you are still underwater gurgling away your last gasp of air. Climbing is like that, it’s do or not do, either you climbed the route or you didn’t. Endurance sports, like long distance kayaking or trail running, I always feel I can manage the distance even if the managing is slow, tedious and running becomes walking. Climbing, as a strength and power sport, is a different beast.

PC: DB

The last few climbing days have featured a lot of “not doing.” One route, a dozen tries, a dozen falls, and I could not get more than a metre or three off the ground. Another route, my second day on, I climbed it clean; although facing up to it first thing in the morning, I remembered the half dozen falls I took on my previous attempts and it took some mental acrobatics to push those out of my head. If you think you can’t, you can’t.

I went back to look at my training log: What was going wrong? How did a promising winter season take such a downward turn? August, it turns out, was a strange month. Over the first 23 days, I only climbed outdoors three times and twice on our home training wall. There was a three day sea kayaking trip, and quite a few mountain biking days (our local new trails finally opened) and some work days on the local trails, and just like that, it was the last week of August and I had not improved over the month.

I believe that climbing is a skill sport. Because of this, my training recommendations always follow the 75/25 rule: 75% of your training time should be spent “practising” climbing, and 25% is where everything else fits in. This is reflected in many of my other programs and will show up in this one, too. A good rule of thumb: If you’re wearing climbing shoes (bouldering, capacity workouts, outdoor climbing) then it is “practice”. If you’re in street shoes or barefoot, it falls in the “training” category. Steve Bechtel. Full Tilt Program.

Inadvertently, I’d flipped the 75/25 rule to 25/75. Time to put away the running shoes and bicycle shorts and get back to serious climbing, because the goal is always to keep the goal the goal.

The Tragedy of Delay

I don’t normally read the Daily Mail but this story somehow caught my eye. It is a sad narrative, no, more than sad, tragic, because, if you are reasonably affluent in the developed world, your health is in your hands and you can improve beyond imagination even into your older years.

It is so easy for all us to put off until the tomorrow that never comes, all the things we are going to do to make our health and our life better, but, tomorrow, as every older person knows, sneaks up on you awfully quickly leaving all those things undone unless we remain vigilant.

Like most other folks, I spent a good part of my life thinking “I’ll start tomorrow,” or “I’ll start on Monday,” or even, “I’ll start on the first day of the month.” There is no more fallacious thinking than this. If you aren’t working on making things better, those things are not merely staying in place, they are getting worse. Habits are being ingrained, dopamine reward systems are keeping you tied to the same dismal behaviours and change becomes harder and harder as the days pass.

There’s no need to be perfect and consistency – the holy grail of behaviour change – is never completely achieved. But you do have to get up each day and dust yourself off and keep trying. I never write off any idea, no matter how the experts deride it (the experts always find error in something that does not mesh with their professional indoctrination). I’ll try anything that makes sense to me. The experts, the ones who bleat about “health at every size” and “all foods can fit,” have failed us thus far so I feel no compulsion to listen to anything they have to say.

I don’t know about you, but I have no desire to end up like Miriam, full of self-loathing, and confined to a wheelchair because I just had to have that vanilla slice.

Nostalgic Paddling

Today was a bit like the old days when people came out to paddle. The old days too in that I was the only female among four men (three with beards – admit it ladies, they all look alike!). Doug and I paddled down to meet the crew at Surf Beach. Surf Beach has all the amenities (easy beach access, parking, water, even a cafe) but I’ve never suggested launching there before because it is a surf launch and that turns so many people off. After watching the trouble some folks had launching and landing through pretty easy surf last weekendat Boydtown I thought it was not a bad idea, given conditions were excessively friendly, to incorporate a surf launch and landing into the paddle.

PC: DB

It was an easy landing and easy launch and I got four chances (two for each) as I paddled back into Surf Beach at the end of the paddle to help with the kayaks. Doug paddled with a pod of dolphins on the way south but I, thinking as usual that I was late, was paddling swiftly down to Surf Beach and missed the dolphins altogether.

PC: DB

The Tollgate Islands, which I have visited dozens of times, did not disappoint. The water was clear and all manner of nooks, gutters, caves and grottos were paddled into. We spent a fair bit of time sitting outside the Blue Cave but conditions were just a bit punchy today with a long period swell so in the end no-one went in.

PC: DB

I think there will be more paddles that incorporate surf launches and landings. It’s never made sense to me that to avoid these entirely. Like paddling into the wind, dealing with surf seems a necessary skill. In the end, there’s no sense being the fastest paddler if you can’t get off the beach at the start of the day.

Going It Alone

Andy, of course, did not merely run out of water, Andy pushed himself so hard he got rhabdomyolysis or rhabdo as the Cross Fitters call it. None of us had ever heard of rhabdo until a series of cases emerged during the heyday of the popularity of Cross Fit. But, rhabdo is not merely an intensity event, ultra-runners get rhabdo too. And, Andy’s story – listen to the podcast here (beware, the host has the grating ABC voice and affiliation to excessive emotion that makes the ABC so damn excruciating, my apologies to ABC aficionados) - shows that even bushwalkers can get rhabdo.

Rhabdomyolysis occurs after intense skeletal muscle breakdown where the contents of muscle cells leak from the myocytes (muscle cells) into the extracellular (outside the cells) fluid and circulation. Outside of crush injuries and other causes of rhabdo (certain infections, medications, alchohol and others), excessive and intense exercise and/or ATP failure (ATP is the primary energy carrier for cellular metabolism) are the particular causes that affect bushwalkers. Of note, statins, those (largely useless) chemicals beloved by the pharmaceutical industry as a continuous revenue stream are an increasingly common cause of rhabdo! What a wonderful side-effect that is.

After muscle cell breakdown, a whole cascade of events occurs resulting in electrolyte abnormalities, and kidney damage sometimes including complete kidney failure. Obviously, this is something to be avoided, and, it’s a fascinating testament to both human endurance and human stupidity that we can push ourselves so hard physically that we can literally kill ourselves. So much for the central governor theory.

Andy, poor bloke, may be at higher risk than some other folk. Older obese men do have a higher risk of rhabdo and, judging from the podcast, he may not have started the K2K in tiptop physical condition. Certainly, Andy did not accurately judge the state of the bush along the K2K which I continue to contend is hard to appreciate unless you have experienced it - preferably multiple times as a single event can easily be construed as a one off. Bush-bashing as Andy experienced is a full body experience and has as much in common with strolling along a trail as Trump has with truthfulness.

Passing through very thick regrowth requires certain bodily manoeuvres which are not expected in bush walking. Years ago, I developed the “five point trail breaking scale” for use in the Canadian back-country after heavy winter snow storms. I believe it is time that some enterprising and insightful individual developed a similar scale for bush-walking through regrowth. This would include such descriptors as “hurl entire body including back pack at the offending scrub with as much force as it is possible to produce,” and, “slither along the ground on your belly while fully enmeshed in vines with the tensile strength of wire rope.” Look for this scale in a later blog post.

The other problem for Andy is that he was solo and, much like breaking trail through deep snow, there is valour in having a bigger party to share the burden. Although it can be difficult, once passed through to find signs of passage through the post-fire regrowth, there is no doubt that the second and all subsequent walkers are afforded a slightly easier time. This is a factor that I think solo walkers now need to consider: the game has changed and solo bush-bashing is so very much worse than it was before the great fires of 2020. If you are on your own, you get no break from the labour.

The other interesting thing about Andy’s experience is that although he could have simply turned around and walked out, he did not, mostly (it seems) because he had no car at the Kanangra end as his wife had dropped him off and then driven away. Hindsight, of course, would indicate that turning around and dealing with not having a car at the trail head is much preferable to being hospitalised with kidney failure, among other health issues. But, that’s how we humans think sometimes. Matters completely extraneous to the decision at hand influence us to an undue degree. This is a decision trap which you can read more about here.

All Care and No Attention: Boydtown Paddling

Where everyone is responsible, no-one is really responsible. Albert Bandura.

On Saturday, I took a group of six (including me) north around Twofold Bay. The swell, which had peaked at around 10 metres in the past week, had declined to around 2 to 2.5 metres on the Green Cape wave buoy but still had significant energy. Most of us launched from in front of the Sea Horse Inn where the swell was a little smaller, but, looking north up the beach in front of the caravan park, I did see signs of some carnage getting through the surf break and a number of paddlers came trolleying boats along the beach after watching other paddlers taking swims. The surf on Boydtown Beach varies from a bit of a dump at certain tides to a lovely spilling wave – we had the latter so with some judicious timing and a short burst of hard paddling, it was easy to get out with dry hair. I got all my paddlers out dry, except for one who launched solo near the caravan park and had a swim or three.

We had a pleasant day of it paddling around the Twofold Bay and stuck our heads out into the ocean swells past Lookout Point. We probably could have landed at Yallumgo Cove had I been more on the ball. As it was, we proceeded northeast a short distance and then headed back and had lunch at Cattle Bay, a nice quiet beach with an easy landing. 

After lunch, we crossed the bay and landed, one at a time, on Boydtown Beach with everyone this time coming in near the Sea Horse Inn. The tide had dropped, however, and the first break was a bit sharp and steep – not a true shore dump – but a little less friendly for inexperienced paddlers. Despite my best efforts and, what I hoped were clear instructions, I had one swimmer who broached and, without an automatic lean and brace, almost immediately capsized and swam into shore. I am working on clear, concise, easy to implement instructions for surf landings – slightly harder than launching – but the truth is experienced paddlers have a repertoire of surf landing skills that are hard to impart to beginners when most of our responses are reflexive to conditions. We might back paddle, we might rudder, or we might run in on the back of a wave, we may even surf in. A swim at the end is better than a swim at the beginning however, as dry clothes are at hand.

On Sunday, with calm winds, sunny skies and an even lower swell, six of us paddled down to Mowarry Beach. It was relatively easy to paddle between Red Point and Sea Horse Shoals and the paddle down the coast to Mowarry Beach was very pleasant. Mowarry Beach had the usual dumping wave and deep water off the beach, but we had no trouble landing and launching all our paddlers dry. Timing is everything at Mowarry Beach, wait for the smallest wave of the smaller sets and paddle in quickly on the back of the wave. Leap out. The leap out part is of critical importance as the beach is very steep and it is easy for the kayak to be dragged back into deeper water, whereupon one will be pummelled by the next dumping wave.

PC: DB

But how does all this relate to my first quote? Well, if you ask everyone in the group to look out for the entire group and head count occasionally, very few people will actually do this, even in small groups. It’s a bit like communism, it sounds like such a great idea but in reality, is a disaster.