Rock Climbing Training

Season 01

Workout No. 006 ~~ JAN/14

Base Fitness Phase – Week 1

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Come with me if you want to crush!

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Crusheronis and Crusheritas of the internet -- I can't even begin to explain how beautiful of a day I had today. The sun came out, did it's thing, and got everyone in the city moving and enjoying the day. Today was so good, it was one of those days that made me question the causality premise of the universe... I'm gonna rant about how nice of a day it was. I gotta take these moments to appreciate the blue sky days, because we get a lot of rain around these parts at this time of the year.

Did the sun come out and enhance my motivation?

Or did my raw emotion and powerful feelings alter the atmosphere, part the clouds, and bless the world with a sunny day. I choose to believe the latter of the two options, and I plan to sacrifice on of my dogs to the sun gods later today to make sure that it continues. I'm gonna hit you with a couple pics to sum things up here.

Starting the day off right with a piping hot, freshly aero-pressed coffee from SaltSpring Coffee -- one of the best 'semi-local' roasters from one of the gulf islands around here.

After a hot cup of fresh, we got outside, only to realize that it was an absoloutely perfect January day. So our boys took us for a walk.

Walking a long, and we start seeing all sorts of colours. I'm trying my hardest to not get my hopes up.. But I think Springtime is trying it's hardest to get here (this bodes poorly for the upcoming forest fire season, but we'll cross that bridge when we get there). Bring it on!

You can do it little buddy! Go go go! (Caity later told me that these flowers are called "Hellebores" and they're supposed to be blooming around now... whatever. still a sign of spring.)

The dogs walked us all the way down to the dog park by the ocean. We bumped into poodles, german shepherds, dalmations, pugs and collies. They were all out there, and everyone was in a good mood. The sun does some amazing things to animals, including humans.

Shortly after taking this photo, we turned around and made our way back home where we whipped up a really tasty seitan-sausage hash with veggies and more coffee. I had to get a little bit of food in my belly for the upcoming training day! So on that note, lets get in to Day 6 / 7!!!

Check out how the calendar for the rest of January looks!

January 2018 - Season 1

Click for fullscreen version

Hey hey hey look who remembered to get his shit together in a moderately untimely manner! Picture updated with our progress so far! What uuuuup! This might be a weekly image update -- not sure at this point.

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The Workout:

The Plan (The Good):

OM Day #2.

• 5 pitches of climbing. That's all, that's it. treat it like endurance climbing.
• Including some OAE that was SUPPOSED to be the plan for Sunday.. But due to the forced rescheduling of our week because of complications noted in this post here, we've done a little shuffling of the schedule.

Objective Review (The Bad):

• Climbed 3 pitches on lead: (1-5.9 pitch, 1-5.10a pitch, 1-5.10b pitch, );

Subjective Review (The Ugly)

• Today was a pretty short day but that's alright.
• We got in 3-solid pitches on lead today, but we had to cut it short, because my climbing buddy, @somebuttstuff, only had a short window in between his TWO JOBS on Sunday.. This isn't even his main job, which he does during weekdays. If you've got a spare upvote laying around, toss it his way. The more time he has, the more belaying he can do for me.
• Felt really good though. Climbing on some pretty decently overhanging routes at the 'cave' area in the gym -- lead only in here. Cool kids only.
• I'm chalking this one up as a double checkmark (see calendar above) because @caitycat and I went out and played some squash last night. I brought my 360 camera to that, but I haven't checked out the footage yet. It should be fun -- stay tuned!

Picture of yours truly, taken by the one and only @somebuttstuff -- putting the rope away at the end of the session!

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This is the part where I'd like to try to share something with each post. Last time, I shared a picture of terrible video of some lead climbing at my local gym. I've previously spoken about motivation and goal setting, and how setting goals is essential for making progress in this kind of pursuit.

Now I'm back home, well fed, and I may have found a couple of beers.

If you like beer, I've already recommended Driftwood. This is one of my all-time favorite beers. The Amnesiac by Phillips Brew Co.. Nothing feels better on sore climbing hands than an ice cold beer.

I'm sitting here thinking about climbing and how to convey how I feel about it. I've got some climbing magazines, I've got Steemit open, and I'm writing a post about climbing today before the beer kicks in too hard. I felt the sun recharge my body today. Today is a good day to do a bit of planning and, like as fellow climber @markpu mentioned a few days ago, goal setting. So I grabbed a guide book for one of the local crags that I'm excited to explore a bit more.

Enter Nanaimo Crags. About 2 hours north of where I live. It's a bit of a bummer that it's so far away, but I plan on getting a van to have some fun weekend-long adventures soon here -- more on that later

I flip through the pages, and think about how I feel. Previously, before I hurt myself, I was on-sight climbing in the 5.10c-10d range without much worry. And with a little bit of working, I managed to lead a 5.11a in Kelowna (after my previous experience with this training plan. I'd like to get back to that point again, methink, so I'm going to try to find some exciting climbs in the 5.10d-5.11b range. This should be a good challenge, but also very achievable. Lets see what's available at two of the more picturesque crags around here -- The Dark and Sunny Sides at the Nanaimo River.

Oh man! Look at that! In one little area, we found about five different 2/3 star climbs (for those who are inexperienced with climbing guides, the more stars means the more enjoyable a climb is... It's pretty subjective, but some routes just have such an amazing flow to them that you feel like you're completing some kind of prophecy when you do it). I was looking at Psuedo Placenta - 5.11a and got pretty excited about it the last time I was out there. There's even a cool sounded 5.10b MIXED GEAR line that sounds cool -- I bought a full rack of nuts last year that I'm dying to try out -- this might be my chance. I'm planning on going out there within the next couple weekends as a recon mission to see what each of these routes is like. This will inform how to train (work on pinches, crimps, slopers, or hand jambs, etc...), and it's hard to get psyched on a route by just reading the description. Stay tuned for next update!

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After the last couple posts, I spent some time thinking about how I can make this space a little sexier. And two things came to mind:

• A drone;
• A van.

In the spirit of openess and transparency that is unavoidable here on Steemit, I would like to declare that all SBD rewards PROFITS (steem dollar returns over and above what I invest as post promotion) generated from these CRUSHENING blog posts will go towards funding a camera drone, and a van. This will directly enable me to capture more interesting perspectives once the dry season rolls around, as well as allowing me and @caitycat to spend more time in these places, which also enables up to create the content we're hoping to make. If you've made it this far down the post, then I give you mad kudos. Be advised, on one of the @dtube posts I made earier, I ended up getting a pretty juice upvote from @curie out of it. It is my intention to use this money as a launch pad to, in some way, shape or form, promote these posts (please tell me what is and isn't acceptable. I see a lot of @grumpycat stuff going on, but I'll be sure to make sure I don't promote this when it's that old. I digress -- back to my original point -- when this post becomes 24hrs old (approximately 5:30pm PST), I'm going to use some paid upvote services to boost this post. So get your upvotes in before that, and enjoy some juicy curator rewards! I wont do any promotion or resteeming of my own before this -- I'm trying to make this a bonus for my followers.

Please upvote and resteem generously. There's some amazing places on the island that I would like to share. I try to respond to all questions and comments that I get, so make some noise! If you have any questions about some of the climbing jargon / lingo I used, just ask, and I'll break it down. I might even make it a feature in my next post, in which case I'll give you some credit, and maybe even some kind of reward... unknown at this time.

That's it for now -- I'll see you on Day 8!

Be well, stay safe, and I'll see you on the sharp side (once it dries out around here).

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Previous CRUSHENING posts:

• Day 5
• Day 4
• Day 3