Juggling Sea Urchins (or, I suck at recovery week)

I should really post about yesterday's workout, though it's kind of embarrassing. I found I had a couple hours to spare before having to go back to the theatre for opening night, so I took BART over to GWPC and rented some shoes for some (cue dangerous music)...bouldering.

You see, I don't boulder much. Like, at all. It makes me very, very nervous. Not the climbing, really - I do that all the time. It's the falling onto the GROUND that I dislike. You see, when you fall on toprope or on lead, you don't hit the ground (at least you shouldn't, if you're doing it right). The rope catches you. So, if you have chronic patellar dislocation issues, you don't need to worry so much about your knees blowing out if you should happen to land at a bad angle. Even though bouldering doesn't go very high and the ground is very padded, it still freaks the shit out of me. The upshot of this is that I suck at it. Max, who showed up early for his own workout and so had a little time of his own, joined me and basically held my (figurative) hand up some V1's and even a V1+. I discovered that I really like working the hard cave problems because they're low to the ground, so there's nowhere to fall. This is great, except these kind of problems are very strength-intensive and hard on the hands, so I was pretty pumped and handsore after a couple hours of it. But at the end of the day I'd done 3-4 V0's (basically all of them), and had either tried or completed or pieced together all the V1's. If fear were not an issue, I might be a V2 or V3 climber, but it is, so here's yet another thing I need to do more to get over my mental blocks about it.

Then I did my "strength" workout, which was just silly, and it felt even MORE silly because GWPC only has one cage, and it's in the CrossFit area, and class was going on. So there I was, with the whole gang busting their butts on some clean-and-press variations, but I WASN'T doing that. I was diligently putting up a 95 pound squat. Rawr!

Back Squat x 5: 65-85-95
Back Squat x 21: 65
Bench Press x 5: 65-75-80
Bench Press x 21: 65



This morning I met Tor at Ironworks for some climbing, and my hands were already feeling quite beat up. So I thought I'd try and take it easy. Yeah...that rarely works out, for some reason.

10a(o), L10a/b(o), L10b(DNF), 11a/b(F+), 10b(F)

First 10a felt kind of burly. I switched to leading, which may not have been a good idea. I had a bad case of the freakouts on the bottom of the first climb - about 10' off the ground, just before the first clip, the move called for a traverse on an undercling leading to a fairly small throw up over an overhang. I'd done the climb before, on toprope, without any trouble. But for some reason (probably the bouldering), I lost it a little. My grip felt sketchy, and I started thinking about what would happen if I fell (basically, I'd just fall on Tor, spotting me below). This led to jitters, which led to me downclimbing and coming off the wall to gather my shit. After calming my nerves, I did it again without any trouble (I just skipped the fucking undercling). Then came the horrible 10b. Easy up to the first clip, the next section was so negative as to basically be a long roof. The move was a big jug on the right hand, a two-finger undercling on the left, and a HUGE throw with the right up to a solid jug over the roof, during which time you're keeping yourself on the wall with that two-finger undercling. It's a bitch of a move. On toprope, I'd just go for it and either fall or not, but on lead I felt the need to be more conservative, which basically just wound up burning gas as I tried and backed off twice. I finally just went for it on the third try, and did manage to catch the hold...and then failed to CLIP THE FUCKING ROPE because my left hand was trembling and completely messed up from the strain of the undercling. I swear, I hung there and tried to clip that thing five, six, seven times, all the while my right hand is slowly slipping and I'm 3' above and 2' behind the last draw (ie, falling will pendulum me right into the wall). I didn't make it. Tor took up as much slack as he could and I got my hips as low as possible before letting go, and it was awkward and I did slam into the wall a little and got a little nasty rope burn on the back of my calf somehow. Ugly, but not disastrous.

After that I moved to back wall where I toproped an 11a/b slab, one move at a time with a healthy number of falls on practically every move, but at least it wasn't overhang. The last 10b WAS overhung, though, and I was out of gas. I had to take a rest shortly before the end.

Afterwards, my hands felt tingly and painful - opening car doors was wince-inducing. I definitely need to build up some more endurance on my climbing volume.

Tonight's WOD at CrossFit was a good one. New bumpers and bars at GWPC means we can finally do overhead work, so Max whipped this one up:

AMRAP* in 20 minutes:

15 Overhead Squats 95#/65#
Max Rep Pull-Ups

2 rounds, 29 pullups, OHS at 65#

Not much to say about this one. Feeling beat up from all the climbing and, I guess, the ardurous recovery week I'm going through, I approached this with something less than fire in the belly. I did manage 15 consecutive OHS in the second round, though, which I'm proud of. It hurts my wrists like nobody's business - I take a very wide grip due to shoulder flexibility issues. If I can squat with my torso more upright, I wouldn't need such a wide grip, which would be nice. Something (yet another thing) to work towards.