I was all set to write this post (by “all set” I mean I had my titular phrase and some rough ideas to bounce around) and then I totally got derailed by the following sequence of events: I mistyped the post’s title at first as “What’s a metaphor?” then was struck by the idea that there has to be some pun that could be made here, then I was stymied by my inability to come up with one. Now I’m having trouble remembering what the ideas I even had were.
Curses.
What’s a metaphor? (more…)
Post titling convention be damned.
I set a goal recently, trying to get more serious about climbing. Following on from that, a few fitness and medicine related things.
1. I’m going to finally call my old family doctor to see about getting my medical records re: my heart murmur.
2. After I have that info (or I know it’s unavailable) I will see a doctor here to make sure everything’s good and see what they say about long term heart health. When I go, I’m going to bring the info from the gym’s fitness assessment web site and have a conversation with the doctor about fitness. All the machines at all the gyms I’ve ever been to say “see a doctor first” and I never did. So I figure I’ll double check. I’ll also get my pertussis shot, as part of preparing for my daughter’s birth.
3. Then I will get a fitness assessment at the gym. I will use that to set some goals for working out, with the aim of making me a more effective climber. (That involves, among other things: losing a few pounds, getting stronger forearms, more ab/core strength, better endurance and cardio fitness over all.)
4. Then I will take the climbing techniques class at the rock climbing gym.
5. Then I will read the climbing fitness and technique book I got, and get something about Devil’s Tower to help stay motivated.
I’m back to climbing. I definitely feel like I used to be better at this, but I wasn’t climbing all that long so I should get back to where I was in short order. I’ve found I really like to go to the climbing gym by myself, especially if it’s not crowded. I do more climbing in less time that way, it’s a more efficient form of exercise and I like the focusing part of it. I mean, I like to climb with people too but it’s just a different head space. I particularly like to go when the gym’s not crowded, like I said. I like to do the same routes or route several times, and I’ve started to track numbers of climbs in my notebook. I track attempts and completions. Today I had 8 attempts up the wall and 6 completions. Those were all at 5.7 or 5.7+ level. (Actually, the 2 attempts I didn’t complete were on this one 5.7+, the 6 completions all on this one 5.7.) I also had 8 attempts and 6 completions on a traverse. For folk who don’t know, a traverse is climbing along the bottom of the wall, parallel to the floor, as opposed to climbing up the wall. I was at the gym for an hour and a half or so, maybe two hours tops. The two times I’ve gone on outdoor trips with four or more hours at the site I’ve climbed up maybe 5 or 6 times, so this is about twice the climbing in half the time or less than half. Pretty cool. My immediate or maybe middle-term goal is to get to 10 completions each, at the wall and on the traverse, regardless of how many attempts that requires. I plan to keep going on days and times when I think it’s not likely to be crowded, to go two to three times per week, and to stick mostly with the same routes and in the same difficulty level. After I get the ten and ten I’ll try to climb all the routes in the gym at this level, aiming for the same number of completions. After that I’ll up the difficulty level and pick one route to concentrate on again until I’m back to ten and ten with that. That’s the plan anyhow. It feels really good to be back to climbing.
My wife and I are apartment hunting. I hate apartment hunting but I’m trying to trick myself into thinking I like it. I’m pretty gullible so I think it’ll work. We capped tonight’s session of driving around and calling rental places with signs in front of them with veggie hot dogs and ice cream from our favorite ice cream joint. Then I dropped her at home and went to the rock climbing gym. (more…)