Waiting for the mountains to freeze!

On Saturday Steph and I spend all day hiking since it has been warm and wet with very little in the way of freezing temps.  I was optimistic at first that the ice would freeze enough for us to go ice climbing but it was a lost dream this weekend.  We ended up going for a hike to Mount Whiteface which is one peak north of Smugglers Notch ski resort and is also normally a ski trail into a hut in the good season. 

This was the Lean to that was at 4 miles.

The view from the lean to at four miles!

My sneaker after the 8.2 miles of snow.  It is not ice climbing season yet but I think I might be done with trail running until it is colder.

Most of the hiking was on these old logging roads that had been converted to ski/hiking trails and the trails were sooo wet.  We ended up doing 8.3 miles and by the end of the day we were both really tired. It was a nice day for it and it was a cool spot to see.  There was one lodge that was 3 miles in that I think we will ski camp at this winter at some point.  It was a really cool spot and I can totally see heading out there for a night on skis.  The hut is first come first served and it has a wood stove in it as well so it is not just a lean to.

This past week at the climbing gym I went with Zack and I ended up getting one V5 on my first try and a couple V4 problems.  It is not much of a breakthrough but it is definitely a noticed increase in strength/ability/technique.  Not really sure what to attribute it to.  Hopefully in the next week it really freezes and we can can make it ice climbing before new years.

Turkey Day Hike

So after spending this Thanksgiving down in Methuen at my Uncle Al and Aunt Betty's we went for a 2 night backpack in the White's near the Pemi.  My Father and his friend Strad have had a tradition of hiking every year after Thanksgiving.  I have spent many years hiking Monadnock or some other small peak after the holiday.  This year my wife and I decided to step it up a notch and go out for the weekend.

We were going to do the Mt. Hancock trail but the parking lot was not plowed and there was about 4 inches of slush and we ( I mean me) got the car stuck trying to get into the lot.  I should have just swallowed my pride and forgot the fact that I used to go and get into bad roads with 4 wheel drive for a living.  Maybe it was because all the foresters would have laughed at me if I turned around instead of trying to gun it into the snowbank to get through.  I am not sure. 

I ended up having to kick the snow out under the tires and make steph drive while I pushed the front end back.  We ended up at the Lincoln Woods Parking lot and just on a whim we started hiking in with really no plan.  As we were hiking we decided on Mt Flume since steph had not done it and it was the shorter of three options.  We camped out about 2 miles in on the Osseo trail in some slightly dense beech stands which definitely had a good mast year.  I was seeing empty pods all over the place and no nuts....

Day two we hiked up Mt Flume and it was almost 45 degrees. We took a self portrait on top. I was surprised how mild the temps were. As we were hiking up it occurred to us that this would actually be the last peak on the great circle trail run that I am thinking of. I snapped a picture of steph nearing the summit.

 

On Sunday we hiked out in the morning and when we were driving back home I could see a red jacket/blob of someone climbing Whitney Gilman Ridge.  I love that climb but there is no way that I would put myself there in late November.  This year I took some guy that I had never met before with almost no climbing experience up it and I can remember freezing in the wind on a 60 degree day as he struggled trying to pull a fixed piece of gear out for ten minutes trying to take apart his belay.  I figured he would have guessed that a rusty stemmed cam was not mine but he was a little new to it all I think.  I cannot imagine being up there without a lot of experience under my belt in the winter. Even though it was 50 degrees it had to be cold for that guy in the red jacket. As we were driving home Steph suggested that we round out the weekend and get limber by going to a bikram yoga class so we did that on sunday evening. It was nice to do that after sleeping on partly slushy snow and roots where our tent was for two nights.  

Hepatitus Send

So this weekend I was with my parents and I got out for about 30 minutes of bouldering during the day at Hammond Pond.  Normally I try to get in hours or more but I guess that I have underestimated what can be done in 30 minutes or less when it comes to bouldering and running.  It was a really good session.

I ended up sending this project that I have had on my radar and wanted for a long time called Hepatitis.  It is an Old Henry Barber Line that he gave a rating of 5.12 back when people were climbing in hiking boots and there was not any sticky rubber.  It now has a rating of V5 under the the Vermin scale.  In Mass there is a rich history of small boulders and short 30 foot routes and their first ascents. Some of the lines although really short are a neat place to spend a couple minutes or hours on when you are in the Boston area.  I would not travel here just for them but feel that it is a good place to get a proud line in.  Since Hammond Pond is near my parents house where I grew up I have been looking at this line for almost 10 years.  It is a thin seam that has little crimps along the seam and a few jugs near the top.  As you go out the seam the feet get progressively worse and you really have to concentrate on footwork and core tension to stick on the wall. It was a good send.

Chipping away at each goal one chunk at a time

The last three weekends I have found myself out working away at the goals.  Three weekends ago it was a long trail run with a large elevation change. Last weekend it was leading a crack climb that I had never heard anyone tell me anything about and never climbed before on sight.  This weekend it was going out with a crowd and getting 4 laps in on a hard overhanging 5.10 for endurance and many others on some moderates to round out the day while also being in a good positive atmosphere. I put a list of mega goals over my desk at work that I want to do. My coworkers immediately started making comical remarks about how they were going to add things to my list like have 10 children or win the baby making race.  It just made me want to train harder but I am sure that after my next week of travel there will be something added to my list when I come back.  I feel like the process of adding things to a list on paper and making goals is an important one.  I tried to put some thought into things and I came up with one non climbing goal that is called the great circle.  33 miles of trail running over rocky terrain and 8000 feet of vertical gain in the white mountains of NH. Other goals include things like El Capitan and climbing 5.12 or 5.13. 

 I find myself wondering if it is possible for me to get some of these goals and I think that for each goal I am going to have to start small.  With the example of the great circle, the current Richmond hill run has about 800 feet of vertical gain so that is about one tenth of what is needed and it is in 20 percent more miles at seven miles and this run has been hard for me.  I am not even sure how to step it up enough to get to that level. 


Three weekends ago I did the Mt. Hunger to White Rocks trail run which is 7 miles with 2000 feet of vertical gain. For this run I averaged 18 minutes a mile because the uphill portion and scrambling on the rocks and ice at the top slowed me down and I just couldn't sustain the heart rate.  I found myself saying well if this were the great circle I would have to do better because 18 minutes a mile at 33 miles is about 10 hours and that is longer than I think I could sustain myself.  maybe if I can get it to 12 minutes a mile or less would make it 6 hours and 45 minutes or less.   So that is the goal.  After doing the short loop and being really happy I found myself thinking of all the other trail runs that I would want to do as training for the loops.  There is one loop at work that during lunch I am just going to have to run it fast because it is over 1000 feet of gain and like 7 miles.  If I can get up to getting this one in 60 minutes I will be happy.  If I can get it in 49 minutes I feel like someone should be giving me a medal. 


This weekend my wife and I went out climbing with a friend named Zack that was a really good time.  It had been a while since I was out with someone who needed some watching to make sure that the belay was solid and that some techniques were foreign to.  I forgot how much just being at the crag and watching people climbing can be fun and I had a good time explaining some techniques and going from there. We ended up adding a fourth to our group at the cliff when my coworkers husband showed up at the crag to get a couple of burns in before going back home to the kids. It was good.  I forgot how simple it can be to just be out there with friend in the woods and to just be there. I ended up getting in four burns on a 5.10a that is steep and pumpy that was good for me to remember overhangs and keep the technique up.


This next weekend I will be at home with the parents and it is close to some great bouldering on pudding-stone which after years of looking at climbing magazine pictures makes me think that it is a mini cobble canyon. I have never been to cobble canyon but I am sure that I will make it there some day and I will be ready.  I have two V4s that I have been trying for years that I want to get this weekend. One of them is a Henry Barber line called hepatitis that is really not my style of a climb but is really aesthetic for a short route.  I am hoping to get it because it would be a breakthrough to get it.  Each time that I have been home recently I have tried it and got one hold farther.  It is also one of those routes that I have never seen anyone try so every year as my technique has improved I have tried new things and got farther with no beta from others and no help.  I think I have only had a spotter there once.  If I do start getting the topout I am going to make my dad or mom come out and belay me.

Bouldering for Power

So this weekend I found myself bouldering because it was a little too cold for roped climbing and the weather was hit or miss.  The temperature was hovering around 40 degrees and it would have been fine to have a belayer but you can stay warmer if it is just bouldering with a down jacket worn in between the problems.  It turned out to be a good session but I forget how much bouldering can take it out of you in such a short time period. I ended up working this problem that it between a V4 and a V5 that has a hard finish called whales tale.  I didn't get it but I did learn that for me at this time it is worth walking away from the problem at hand and doing others to get your motivation up and then coming back to it.  I ended up doing 10 problems between V0 and V2 and working 3 significantly harder problems and being able to link all the moves but not in one continuous push.  Next time I am there maybe I can just get these three hard problems.  On the verge of breakthrough...... I feel that it is important to work on hard moves because I want to make sure that I can climb through them when it comes to the taller cliffs and that I don't get held up.  Hopefully this pays off.  The hardest part for me is getting into bouldering.  Sometimes it is hard to remember that it has it's own right.

Goals Big and Small

So I found this last week to be really hard to get in enough mileage to make the 29+ miles which was my goal  (big goal).  The mileages were something like this. I also wish I had a GPS or something because the trail runs are approximate and most likely considerably larger due to the up and down factor and the switchbacks which do not make the maps.

Day1; 6.2
Day2; 4
Day 3; 2
Day 4; 5.2 (this day I was running 8:20s which made me feel good) (small goal)
Day 5; 5
Day 6; 4 (this day was our normal loop, it felt really hard but it came out faster than normal)
Day 7; 4 (this day I was feeling a pump in my calves from all the running continuously)
Total: 30.4

For my endurance front this is, for me a major breakthrough. I have never run this fast before in one day or this many times in a row and in even some cases that many miles with hills.  On the work front we have decided to do a team or two for the Burlington marathon relay which will be my first ever running race.  I decided that I wanted to do the hill section since doing either the beginning or the end would rob me from the real glory of running a whole marathon if I ever decide to in the future.  After running 7 days in a row I will be glad to take one day off. I am almost of the mindset that it would have been easier to do 4 long days with 3 days of rest in between instead of running every day but I am not sure.  The issue right now is time.  It simply is taking too long to get in a 5 mile run and not go over on the lunch break. The next goal is to get into speed training for real and maybe get to be able to do a 7.5 minute mile.

For the climbing front it has been hard as we are in the fall season and it rained on the weekend or was too cold to find a dedicated belayer.  I will be heading up to the gym tomorrow to go bouldering and to get a workout in. My next goal is to either climb 30 boulder problems or get 4 V5 routes while I am there.  V5 in the VT gym seems to be a hard number for me where if I do not have the beta from someone and walk up to it it takes a couple of tries and sometimes I never get it.

Birthday Challenges

I went to visit my friend Isaac in Colorado and we did the fourth flatiron near boulder and the green mountain pinnacle. I was looking for an adventure and this had it.  The route is supposed to be all face and I found us doing a little chimney pitch diversion on pitch eight and I mistakenly had worn my nice pete's greens shirt.  Whoops!  I always have loved those front range areas and really enjoy the climbing and the exposure for such mellow climbing.  We did 8 pitches of 70 meter rope in about 3 hours.  The flatirons are at about 6 to seven thousand feet in elevation so I was super psyched to be doing quick pitches at the altitude and hiking at fast speed with a pack and without being winded.  All that running is paying off. Then I did my audit on monday and took a break to run 3 miles at the five thousand foot height.  I found this really hard for me but also very good to find my limit since hiking was not too hard.

My Friend Isaac just had a baby!  He was psyched to get outside after being stuck with the baby for so long and so little sleep.  I was glad to be his rope gun. The afternoon after I did the flatiron with Isaac we drove to the Mile-Hi Skydiving spot in Longmont Colorado and signed up to jump.  I was surprised at how macho all the instructors were for a sport that is so engineered.  We were on wind hold for about 2 hours waiting as others jumped so we got to see the instructors perform their routine several times.  It was neat.  I will say that it is easier to jump out of a plane than I thought it would be and there are times in climbing where it is harder to take the first step or move than stepping out of a plane. 



So this year for my birthday back in VT I did not have the opportunity to climb 28 pitches of rock like I did last year but I found myself wanting a challenge that satisfied me. I ended up running about 6 miles of trail with one thousand feet of elevation gain and loss on this amazing single track that is easily accessible from our office. It was good to take the hour off from the drone of the cubicles. On the trail I had never been on it so when I ran for almost 40 minutes directly uphill and decided to go over the backside having never been there before it was a little bit of a head game to know if I would be able to keep up with things.  I ended up coming out at a coworkers house just a couple of miles from the office.  It was more than I had thought but it kept the spirit of adventure that I was looking for.   I cannot wait to continue to explore the trails back there.  It is great to have so many trails so accessible for training.  Part of me is wondering if I can get 29 miles in this week of running .  I am finding myself calculating things and deciding that by one week from the 20th I will have run 29 miles.  My Age in miles.

Cross Training Round 2

So I have decided that I need to better myself everywhere to be able to better myself on the rock.  Rock climbing requires a good cool headed self effortlessly and smoothly moving up the rock. Speed is needed on the easy terrain to save energy for the hard terrain.  Poise and balance is needed for the hard terrain and a climber constantly has to check in with oneself to ensure that no extra energy is wasted. 

I am asking myself what better way to check in with your body then long trail runs and interval speed training?

This week I have found myself on one long 5 mile trail run with many ups and downs where my co-worker and I have run at a set time and tried to keep the pace on the uphills and downhills.  I am glad that Catriona knows paces as I am never good at judging what they were.  It is all I can do to keep myself moving up the hills.  Supposedly our pace is at a 9 minute mile or less.

Day two of training found us running intervals.  We did a 1/2 mile fast then 1/4 fast and a 1/4 jog.  The average pace was about a 3:15 half mile which made me feel really good. We did three repeats of this all over the hour lunch break.   I have never run a mile at less than 8 minutes and I would love to better myself here if I could. 

While doing the intervals I found myself playing with both my stride and cadence.  It is giving me a chance to understand what it would be like to do this pace in short steps up a hill. 

When my wife and I took a hike one evening and I found myself wondering if I would be able to do the same mountain as a trail run.  As we hiked up I was worried of the steps and little rocks that I would need to stride around.  Intervals and hills as a trail run made me feel like I would be able to take the strides necessary to complete this.

Cross-Training

So I was taking a self assessment this week of my weaknesses and also; Why I have been falling or not completing certain climbs?  I have decided that it comes down to two things.

1. Mental Challenges and head games
2. General Fitness

This past weekend when I was climbing I made it up every climb and I had the ability to do every move however when sequences got really tough I was unable to take the time to ensure to myself that the falls were clean or that the gear was good.  Instead I took the safe route and tested the system.  This left me cursing myself at the top of  one or two climbs because I had not accurately tested myself.   I was climbing with a sport climber type from Connecticut who just asked the one simple question. 

"Have you ever tried harder than that" 

It left me thinking "well gee I am not so sure anymore." So thinking about my skills and limits I have decided that many of the reasons are me not actually pushing myself.  My feet do not slip off. I seldom miss the general holds and sequence.  I rarely pump out.  This left me with the general position that I need to push myself. 

What better way than to do that running, stretching, and cross training since I cannot maximize my time on the rock?

This weeks plan is to run 20 miles or more and get myself stretching so that I continue to increase my flexibility.

So far it is Wednesday and I found that I was able to run each day and also fit in time for 5 pitches of tweaky short sport climbing at Bolton quarry.  We will see if the rain holds up for a weekend of climbing.

The Training Begins!

So I have started this blog as a way to start training intensively again for my rock climbing goals and to improve myself in a new way.  My goal here is to climb the grade of 5.13.  I have never been able to get even near to it.  As someone who has always had school or work or life in the way I have decided that it is time.  My Journey begins in the small town of Montpelier VT.  The closest cliff to home with established climbs is 19.1 miles away.  There are 5.12 climbs and easier at this small band of cliffs which will provide the perfect training ground for me to continue on my journey to the 5.13's.  My next month is going to be spent assessing my strengths and finding a good way to work on my weaknesses. I hope to get all of my thoughts on paper so that I can have each step and progress point down to work on over the next year.  Last weekend I lead a 5.8 trad route and was able to toprope some 5.12s.  I felt gripped on the 5.8.  I am going to need to get better to even think of leading a 5.13.