Tips about this Site

  • As Jane and I take hikes and climb mountains in our training, I'll post trip reports on my page of the EveryTrail.com website. It's a great place to find GPS data for other trips you might want to enjoy too.
  • I've posted the reason for creating for this blog and a little history at the bottom of this page.

Saturday, January 23, 2010

Tricky V2

Got back to the gym for the first time today since leaving for China (two weeks away is a long time). Did a quick 5.5 mile ride on the Espresso Bike - this put numbers to the loss over the two weeks - 19 minutes at 196 watts - first time under 200 in quite a while. After that I spent some time on a V2 boulder problem that I first started trying in mid-December. And after a few false starts, I got it today. It was a balance and "feet" problem not a strength problem on a wall slightly below vertical (but crimpy little fingers made it very difficult to stay on the wall). What finally did it was better direction to the crimps and a bump rather than a cross-over hand grip that I'd been trying. Because of the poor fingers, I hadn't been able to shift weight to the lead foot for body position. The bump, and trusting in a small foot chip, while keeping low did it. Nice learning - can't wait to return to it and see if the muscle memory stays. Weigh-in wasn't great, but not bad either - after a week in China and another at work with poor diet management, I maintained below 190 at 189.1.
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Background and the Reason for this blog

This journey started a little over two years ago. In October 2007, overweight, out of shape, and suffering from a severe case of desk job-itis...

Mt St Helens Crater Rim
At Jane's suggestion (Jane's my wife and climbing partner), we started getting out and taking hikes during lunch. These grew in length and duration until the following July (2008), we climbed Mt Hood then in Aug we climbed Mt St Helens and went rock climbing at Smith Rock State Park and took a Glacier Rescue course from Timberline Mountain Guides (TMG) on the Eliot Glacier. We'd belonged to Club Sport Oregon for some time, and these successful outings renewed our interest and activity. We started using the rock gym there.

Mt Hood Illumination Saddle
That winter, Jane decided that she wanted to climb better, so she got serious and started working out with a personal trainer. I was still struggling to get into better shape (still about 40 pounds overweight) because work made a regular workout schedule very difficult. By the spring, we set our sites higher for the second year. We started the season with another ascent of Mt Hood by the South Route then an overnight in Illumination Saddle and another ascent via the West Crater Rim (both June'09). Later that summer we summitted Mt Shuksan in the Northern Cascades during July'09 and attended the Smith Rick Detour where we attended a self-rescue course.

Mt Shuksan in the North Cascades
In Nov'09 I finally found the secret I needed to getting into better shape. I managed to juggle my work schedule so I could join Jane for her workouts and commited to a 1500-1800 calorie diet (still 40 pounds to lose). Since then I've maintained the diet pretty reliably and gotten to the gym about 2-3 times a week though work still makes the workout schedule irregular, I've lost 10 pounds via the diet and exercise.

We're still climbing with TMG for the mountaineering events, and plan to return to Hood this year; maybe Leuthold's Coulior or the Reid Headwall. We also have Mt Shasta (14,179') and Mt Rainier (14,411') planned (that's my motivation to complete the weight loss and increase the regularity at the gym.) Ideally, we'll join an expedition to Aconcagua (22,841') in Argentina a year from now (Jan-Feb'11) and maybe be able to work a side trip from work (I have occassional business trips to Singapore and China) to Nepal for a trip to Everst (no plans to summit, but would really like to climb above the Base Camp to Camp III, the Advanced Base Camp, at 21,300'.)

This blog will chronicle the journey from here toward those lofty goals.