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.