[a_g]: April 2023

Sunday, April 30, 2023

5 days to move the needle

I was getting all stressed out about some busy weekends coming up and then I was driving home from Food Lion and thought, I've got 5 days where I've basically got all the time I could need to train. Instead of worrying about something in two and three weeks, I've gotta focus on the next five days and move the needle of fitness. Do something. Make it happen. So that's what I'm gonna do.

Thursday, April 27, 2023

grover washington jr.'s just the two of us featuring bill withers is the most perfect song ever crafted

this song feeds my soul

Tuesday, April 25, 2023

one year older or one year better

sometimes it's both

oh man I was running on Ridge Rd today and the sky was so blue and the trees were so green and the sun was shining and the wind was cool and I looked over to the west at the beautiful blue ridge mountains and I thought you can't ever take this for granted. You have to remember it was this good. You have to remember that running felt this good and effortless and the world was free for a moment and perfect and good.

when walt whitman said:

I CELEBRATE myself, and sing myself,

And what I assume you shall assume,

For every atom belonging to me as good belongs to you.

I loafe and invite my soul,

I lean and loafe at my ease observing a spear of summer grass.

My tongue, every atom of my blood, form'd from this soil, this
air,

Born here of parents born here from parents the same, and their
parents the same,

I, now thirty-seven years old in perfect health begin,

Hoping to cease not till death.

Just five more years to go

Sunday, April 23, 2023

all day long run

my mom likes to say that a long run takes up your whole day. you spend the morning getting ready, you do the run, and then you spend the rest of the day exhausted. that was definitely true of today.

It's worth it though. I can almost tell how much fitter I'll feel after I recover. Which might take a while!

Saturday, April 22, 2023

The Rumble 23

Man, climbing is hard. And competition climbing, shoot, nearly impossible. Did my second ever climbing competition today and it went about the same as my first. Just totally wiped.

Reflections:

Some good things: I tried this one climb that was pretty hard but seemed doable and I didn't end up sending it but I'm happy with the progress I made on it. It's a climb that a year ago I wouldn't even have bothered trying so I'm glad my confidence has improved.

The other thing I was happy with was that about 90 minutes into a 2 hour competition block I think I only had one warm-up climb finished because I had spent a lot of time and energy trying to get that aforementioned goal climb. And at that point I knew that I was really tired and not feeling great and that the only way I was going to get some points was by doing some climbs that I felt like were below the level I was hoping to achieve. So I definitely had the thought of just throwing my score card away and leaving. I'm glad that I didn't do that and managed to record at least 5 climbs. I'm not proud of what's on my card but I'm happy I did the equivalent of finishing.

I saw one of the athletes I coach who also runs and she asked me how I did and I said that if this was a race, my game plan had me going out way too fast. I think that's a pretty accurate summation of how it went.

Things to Improve On:

-In my training prior to this competition, it wasn't unusual for me to send multiple v5's in a single session. Normally, depending on the climbs, I could reasonably expect to send 2 v5's and more v4's even if all of the climbs were brand new. I feel like I fell short of that today and my climbing didn't match what I thought I was capable of. And then my confidence went down. And then I was a bit of a mess.

So, one adjustment I will make for the future is instead of comparing how I climb in training to how I climb in a comp, I'll compare comp climbing to comp climbing. Next year I'll begin with the goal of improving on this year.

To phrase it a different way, instead of starting with very easy climbs and gradually increasing the difficulty, my strategy today was, "I'm gonna bet on myself and go for hard climbs early because that's when I'll be the freshest and have the most energy." In hindsight, maybe a gradual approach would have been better because being absolutely shot and falling off things that I knew I could normally do easily was not fun.

The other biggest change I would make is climbing more and training more in the week of the comp. My build up was not ideal. In March I felt like I was in pretty good shape, then going into April I had about 9 days of no climbing because of Costa Rica. I had one week of training where in the span of three sessions I went from feeling pretty weak to decently strong again. And then this week I climbed on Monday and didn't really do much climbing specific training until today. So that's not great. I could tell I was pretty fresh but then became very tired very fast.

I've never done a great job of keeping up climbing fitness when the gym isn't available to me but it's definitely something to be mindful of if I want to improve next time.

Overall, a positive experience. I'll definitely do it again and I look forward to improving and really look forward to projecting all of this stuff for the next few months!