Leaving Cairns

Five months have passed since Doug and I came down the hill to Cairns. In some ways it has been a pretty relaxing time. No long hikes, backpacks, climbs and only one multiday sea kayak trip. But, we have bouldered and worked out at the gym just about everyday and have consequently had fairly continuously stiff, sore muscles. 

On Friday night, we had a wonderful dinner at the house with our Cairns friends. They are all great people and welcomed us so completely into their circle of friends, and were really one of the big reasons we stayed in Cairns for this long. We will miss them all. Yesterday, I had one more burn down at the Esplanade climbing area, and one more WOD at the PCYC gym. 

In the absence of any real climbing, we really got into bouldering while we were here, albeit on an artificial wall. Apart from bouldering on our home-made climbing wall in our house in Nelson and weekly training sessions during the winter at Castlegar bouldering cave, I've never really done a lot of bouldering. I don't even know what grade route I could climb. Actually, it has been so long since we did any regular climbing, that I don't think I know what grade I climb at any more.

With very little experience bouldering, my tactic was just to go two or three times a week, and climb for about an hour. Of course, I had my goal to climb the roof, but, once I had done that a few times, I admit to not having much focus for my bouldering sessions. If there were marked routes, I would work those. Most of them, however, I could get after one to three tries, and there were only one or two that I never got. I don't think that means I am an incredible boulderer, I actually think my success had more to do with the routes being fairly easy than me being fairly badass. 

I am pretty sure I got stronger, but, in hindsight, I think I would have got stronger still had I had some method to my bouldering. I could make a bunch of excuses (I can think of half a dozen right now), but the truth is, I was much more focused on getting a reliable eskimo roll and lifting heavy weights at the gym, than I was on bouldering. 

We leave Cairns tomorrow, and I would like to retain some of the strength and power gains I've made while we have been in town. It is harder to train on the road and easier to think of excuses. I know myself well enough not to make grandiose claims about how dedicated to working out I'll be while on the road. Truthfully, I'm not sure I have the chutzpah to keep training hard while we are travelling. Time will tell, I guess. 

Finally, go here, for a really cool climbing blog that isn't full of all that shiny, happy, hippy, dippy, Barney world view shit that drives me crazy.