Movement is Bliss

Mt. Index, as seen through a haze of wildfire smoke from lands to the East.  If anyone knows of a route up this beast please let me know.  I constantly stare up it and see nothing but seemingly good rock and stellar looking trad lines but have found nothing in terms of route beta for this big wall.

 

A good read from Steph Davis.  I really appreciate this take on living a ‘dirtbag-esque’ lifestyle.  Excellent advice.  I don’t normally enjoy or find the kind of patient wisdom that can really advise young people in their quest to become…whatever it is they think they want to be, in her posts.  But this post is a good one, and focuses on something that we all struggle with from time to time: patience.  I have a horribly low patience threshold.  I guess in my case it can really ebb and flow.  But it definitely gets worse when I feel like I haven’t accomplished anything meaningful for a while. 

A post like this is good because it reinforces the feelings I have about my own situation in life and also shows that there are ways out from underneath the weight of a ‘traditional’ American lifestyle.  A lifestyle that I have never felt a strong calling for.  The majority of my life I have simply floated through financial, academic, or social obligations; under the naïve assumption that ‘things’ will just simply work themselves out.  This way of going about life - a passive aggregate of non-committal behavior influenced highly from a belief established early in my youth that there was always someone better suited for the job than myself - has really left me in a place of starting over time and time again.  The main detractor of this experience being that if you don’t change what’s not working, you’ll never send the problem. 

 

A really hard free solo crack climb I FA'd last weekend.  No Shoes, No Shirt, No Service!

 

 

Here I am about to turn 34 and I’m just now starting to BEGIN to figure out what kind of a life I want for myself.  Not the kind of life my parents want for me, not the kind of life my peers think I should have or deserve, and not the kind of life our traditional mores dictate to us.  But what it is I truly want to do and enjoy.  I’ve already figured out what I want to dedicate myself and my life to and that’s obviously climbing.  It’s quite scary and revealing to make a statement like that one but I don’t think it’s any less important or meaningful than someone who proclaims they want to become a parent, or doctor, or a professional athlete, or a road scholar, or an artist. 

The last couple of weeks have been increasingly difficult.  I’ve dearly missed my time out at the crag, surrounded by familiar faces, laughter, motivation, and engaged in an activity that fills my soul with purpose and serenity.  But I’ve been working extremely hard, probably harder than I normally would have had I been projecting on real rock, in the gym trying to get a head start on training for the RRG.  And things seem to be going well.  This past weekend we had one of the worst wind storms on recorded history for this area and this time of year.  Nearly half a million people lost power, two people were killed by falling tree branches and several more injured; in parts of Seattle the wind was clocked at nearly 50knots!  Yikes.

 

It was a good time to keep a low profile, enjoy time with my friends in a non-climbing setting, and get into the gym and kick my own ass.  I’ve been doing a lot of power endurance training lately, linking long sets of boulder problems into one another, doing weighted dead hangs, and trying to complete ring work outs at the end of it all.  As with any training cycle you reach a point where your body is just straight up broken down.  I hit this wall yesterday when I decided to have a three hour long bouldering session with my good friend Tex.  It was also in part to kind of gauge where my finger is in terms of healing.  The good news is that I crimped pretty damn hard on some overhanging terrain with my injured finger and there was zero pain; the bad news is that I was pretty run down and the session wasn’t exactly a send fest.  But, I don’t let things like that get me down because I know how hard I’ve been working and I realize that you get stronger during the rest cycle then you do during the actual training cycle.  What was so great about yesterday’s session though, was just how much mileage I was able to put down, even after a hard conditioning work out the day before.  I think by switching my focus to power and power endurance it makes the endurance portions of the training cycle easier and more enjoyable.  I’ve also been adamantly getting out and running at least 4miles after every session which has been promoting a stronger cardio base and has ramped up my metabolism.  It’s so nice to have something like the RRG to work towards.  It makes it easier to push off that lack luster feeling ripe with excuses to skip a work out when you’re feeling drained mentally and physically and push on through in order to complete a day of training.  I’m just so psyched to be where I am right now.  I think the year is going to end well and I’m already focused on what next year will bring.  So MANY places yet to go and explore and SO many routes to try.