Snakes, Ropes, and Carbs

Five snakes in mid May, including one red bellied black snake as thick as my forearm! You bet I was moving through the bush cautiously. Apparently, snakes come out after heavy rain, and, as you know if you live in NSW we’ve had heavy rain. After failing to retrieve a rope yesterday, I also had to test my brain to see if I could remember how to prussic up a rope. It took a while, an embarrassingly long time – good thing I was both by myself and not hanging in a crevasse – but I eventually worked out the reason I was making such a mess of it was that my improvised waist prussic was way, way, way too short. Once I extended the waist prussic with my PAS, the problem was solved.

Using the base lodge to practice exiting a crevasse by prussic

You may, or more likely have not, read my long review of “Next Level.” If you haven’t don’t bother reading the review or the book, just read this from a coach and climber, athlete who understands training and performance, and engages in both. Low tide was early this morning and, after all that rain, what a beautiful morning it was. It was both that time of year and that time of day when the sun felt glorious (to quote an eccentric friend of mine).

Stunner of a morning

I read almost exclusively non-fiction; a sort of polymath without the “great learning” part of being a polymath. Right now I’m reading Richard Feinman’s “The World Turned Upside Down.” This is an earlier book, Feinman’s latest is “Nutrition in Crisis.” I’m only two or three chapters in but already it’s a great read, dispelling, in an incisive and humorous way, the nonsense of main stream nutrition advice. Quoting Feinman:

“Establishment medical journals and the private and government health agencies have insisted on low-fat, low-calorie dogma in the face of all its failures.”

Which is a talent really, on par with Einstein’s parable of Quantum insanity; which, paraphrased is doing the same thing over and over and expecting a different result.

Carb loading seems so 1980’s but apparently, it’s still a thing, although this looks more like junk food loading than carb loading and I suspect will result in reduced rather than improved performance. As water goes along with glycogen storage (at a rate of 3 grams of water for each gram of glycogen), overeating carbohydrate will just result in a heavy, sluggish performance. Why are we unable to use common sense? This is analogous to Sims recommending “pre-hydration.” At least, however, if you pre-hydrate you’ll excrete the excess. My first thought is, of course, “tell me you are coached by a main-stream dietitian, without telling me you are coached by a main-stream.” Feinman would shudder.