Hello, is there anybody in there? Just nod if you can hear me. Is there anyone at home? Now that the classic rock quote is out of the way let's get to it. My name is Erika, I'm 5'4" and have a neutral ape index. My goal for the summer is to lead my first 5.11 grade climb outdoors. I have my eye set on a very aesthetically pleasing and airy route by the name of Wicked Gravity on the Back of the Lake wall at Lake Louise.
I've had some trouble getting motivated to train for climbing this winter. Work, school, and some pretty epic skiing seem to have taken up the majority of my time. I work as an EMT in northern Alberta so climbing during a work week is not a possibility, and while I do try to get lots of strength training in during that time, it's really hard to get psyched about it. It's definitely not my jam. Along with work, I am working on my BSc which always seems to take up more time than I expect. I really just need another hour added to the day. Lastly, as I'm sure most of you living in Canada know, this winter has been a skiers dream. Multiple 20+ centimetre snow days makes it really hard to do anything besides ski. Skiing, while leg thrashing, does not help much with maintaining finger strength, technique, or skin toughness.
My hope is that writing about my training will help keep me psyched, or at least guilt me into training on days I don't feel like it. So, without further ado, here's week 1!
Day 1: Here we go! Week 1. I'm going to start my weeks on Sundays, because ... well I don't really have a reason. It was an extremely early morning today as I drove my parents to the airport at 4:30. Daughter of the year award here I come. Being in EMS, I have become very good and waking up for a few hours in the middle of the night and then falling asleep as soon as possible. Today I was very grateful for this skill. Finally started the day 4 hours later by studying for a test that I should have started studying for weeks ago. I find I am most productive doing school work in busy places like coffee shops. Does anyone else have a hard time focusing without a bunch of background noise? Once my brain was fried, it was training time, starting with a 2 hour climb session at Bolder with a 20 minute 6a Beastmaker hangboard workout about an hour in. I'm pretty sure I had way too much coffee before hand and had a hard time holding onto anything for the first few problems. I'm definitely not the best at bouldering and not super strong in the upper body. But hey, that's what training is for right? Today I was able to flash V4 and top some V5's with multiple tries. I feel like I'm plateauing pretty hard lately. Here's hoping some increased finger strength helps with that. If anyone is actually reading this, have any tips?
Day 2: Crushed another 2 hour session today. Maybe didn't climb as well as I wanted to but it was still good enough. It was one of those days were I was just in love with the flow feeling of climbing. This state is what I assume people who like yoga experience or what a runner's high feels like minus the hellish endeavour of breaking through the fatigue wall. I become entranced by the movement and the connection to breathing and just being present in the moment. It's one of the few times I don't feel like an elephant named anxiety is sitting on my chest. This feeling is why I am so addicted to climbing.
Day 3: Today was a rest day. I find rest days to be the hardest. My day suddenly has 2 extra hours that I don't know what to do with. Rest days are sort of a necessary evil. My skin and my joints definitely appreciate them, but my mind does not. I spent this 2 hour window trying to study to no avail. It was mostly me slowly reading one page of the textbook while googling random things that popped in my head. I now know that it takes 6 hours and 29 minutes to drive to Bishop from San Fransisco, but nothing about how to apply the Squeeze Theorem to limits of trig functions. Priorities.
Day 4: Started the day off with an hour of stretching and breakfast with my grandma. After too much coffee and solving the world's problems, I finally made it to the climbing gym. Does anyone else have days where no matter what you try you can't seem to climb anything? That was my session. Repeatedly getting spit off walls I had climbed at least a dozen times. I felt awkward and weak and just shitty overall. Despite this I kept trying for over an hour before giving in to frustration and calling it a day. I'd like to say that I wasn't shaken by the session and I went about my day, but that would be a lie. I was in a pretty sour mood for the rest of the day. I successfully accomplished nothing and created a narrative for what everyone at the gym must have thought about my shitty climbing. I really admire those who are able to quickly bounce back from things like that.
Day 5: Today was an early climbing session with some friends. Climbing felt much better today, though I still didn't climb as well as I would like to. It was refreshing to climb for fun with some friends instead of training by myself. It helped to see how others approach problems and forced me to actually rest between burns. I climbed for 3 hours and stuck to doing routes that I enjoy. The psyche is definitely back up. I really enjoy the earlier sessions. The problem is that I am also much more motivated to study in the morning. I can't wait until this round of classes is over.
Day 6: Today was one of those days where I woke up thinking about climbing. After a morning of failing to fool myself into doing anything productive, I headed to the climbing gym. Apparently 30 of my closest friends had the same thought. I managed to claim an auto-belay and did about 6 laps of climbing up and down-climbing. After a week of bouldering my forearms were burning with the slowly accumulating pump of endurance training. It's difficult to find the right words to describe the feeling of flow I feel working my way up a route. The slow, precise movement feels more natural to me than the big, dynamic moves common to bouldering. That being said, the crowded gym limited my route climbing time so after about a hour it was back to bouldering. My focus was on crimpy problems to work on finger strength. After about an hour of this, my forearms decided they were done and were not going to allow my hands to hold on to anything anymore. In protest to my forearms, I rounded the session off with some shoulder strength and stabilizing exercises then headed home for a nap.
Day 7: Remember how I said I was going to nap? That was a big ol' lie. I ended up studying late into the night. Distance learning is great in that I can take 3 hours in the middle of the day to go climbing, but the work is still there. Eventually all the work I put off must be done. That is how I spent day 7. Rest day number two was completely devoted to catching up on work I had put off. After about 8 hours of this, I had to get my blood flowing. It's the last day of the training week and not even climbers can get out of leg day. Since it is still pretty much winter here, I focused my workout on skiing related exercises. I find rest days really hard to commit to, especially when working on school. Even a quick workout really helps to lift that brain fog that sets in.
So this concludes week 1. If anyone is reading this, let me know what you think. I would love to hear someone else's training stories and tips! Until next time, stay stoked.