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.