Friday glee thinks this is just really pretty

[rydra_wong]

The Friday post of glee is where you get to tell us about your climbing-related happiness this week.

It can be a new achievement or adventure, or just that you climbed and had fun; it can be that your favourite climbing wall is expanding or that you bought new rock shoes or that you found a cool ice-climbing vid on YouTube. No glee is too small -- or too big. Members are encouraged to cheer each other on and share the squee.

N.B. Please feel free to post your glee on any day of the week; the Friday glee is just to get the ball rolling.

To enhance this week's glee: ice climbing on a frozen waterfall at the Cascade de l'Oule in France.

Comments

[wpadmirer]

Those ice climbers are NUTS!

No climbing for me this week, because my partner is off doing a trad climb in Alabama.

In other news, the mysteriously disappearing/accident prone partner contacted me this week! So there may be more climbing in my future.

[rydra_wong]

Hooray for the reappearance of the mysteriously disappearing partner!

My glee

[rydra_wong]

I have a new personal record for number of consecutive pull-ups.

And my foot physio is progressing: I can stand on tiptoe on my left foot again.

ETA: oh, and I have glee because Fran Brown (who climbs at my wall!) got an article about her in the national papers:

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/sport/9949854/Meet-Fran-Brown-the-real-spider-woman.html

Re: My glee

[astridv]

You're gonna be a beast when you get back on the wall. ;)

Okay, now I'm inspired. Screw the crappy weather, I just did an indoor workout. But I can only dream of consecutive pull-ups at the moment... after each unassisted one I need a half-minute break. Good thing I got my trusty rubber band. My back feels better now, too. Last week was so cold, I barely ventured out at all and I just don't like training indoors and my body was starting to tense up all over.

Yay on the foot improvement!

Re: My glee

[rydra_wong]

You're gonna be a beast when you get back on the wall. ;)

Yes, I might be a tiny fraction as strong as Fran! *g*

(Seriously, she can do a one arm pull-up off the back three fingers. She trains really hard and is brutally strong.)

But I can only dream of consecutive pull-ups at the moment... after each unassisted one I need a half-minute break.

That's still highly excellent. I imagine that you'll be able to shorten the breaks over time until you get two in a row for the first time. And/or work assisted pull-ups with the rubber band.

IIRC, it took me a while to get to my second pull-up -- I liked the Bodytribe article which pointed out that initially, a pull-up is a one-rep max. But it will come!

Then, anecdotally, there seems to be another plateau that people often hit at around 6 or 7 reps (I definitely did). I ran into the suggestion of starting weighted pull-ups to break through that, and that seems pretty effective so far.

I'd kind of thought of weighted pull-ups as the kind of thing you shouldn't even think about until you could do twenty pull-ups in a row, you know, but adding a mere 4kg (so far) has made the number of unweighted pull-ups I can do in a row start to spike up again.

Re: My glee

[astridv]

Interesting article. It feels so strange that between one-rep and two-rep, there should be such a difference. When I was 18 I could do pullups forever, it didn't even feel hard. (sigh)

But last summer I could, at one point, do three in a row... I vaguely recall. So I have hope that I'll get back there once the weather becomes friendlier and I can train more regularly again.

(But it'll be a long while before I'd get any urge to add weights. ;) Right now I'm rather looking forward to shedding all these extra layers of clothing.)

Re: My glee

[rydra_wong]

When I was 18 I could do pullups forever, it didn't even feel hard. (sigh)

Ha. When I was 18, I'd have laughed in the face of anyone who'd told me I'd ever be able to do a pull-up.

But last summer I could, at one point, do three in a row... I vaguely recall. So I have hope that I'll get back there once the weather becomes friendlier and I can train more regularly again.

From what I've read, I have the impression that (assuming you haven't been off for years and years), it tends to be faster to regain strength than to gain it in the first place.

Re: My glee

[weirdquark]

I also ran into a wall around 6-7 consecutive pull-ups though part of it is that I've been gaining weight and have to keep working my way up to 5+ again. :) I figure that if I ever bother to try to lose weight I can count this as weighted pull-up training.

[emperor]

Wow, that is Death. Beautiful, breath-taking Death, but Death all the same. I wish I was hardcore enough to do that sort of thing :)

[rydra_wong]

Even if I was that hardcore, I think I'd still prefer to watch and admire it from a safe distance. *g*

[weirdquark]

I finally bought climbing shoes!

And then I went to the bouldering wall to break them in properly (the store didn't have wall to test them on though they did have some footholds attached to a post) to discover that it was time to change the routes at the gym and staff took down every single hold that was on the wall and had only gotten around to putting up one new one. (It was a V0. I climbed it. And that was it for the day, sigh.)

At least there will be new routes up next time I go.

[rydra_wong]

Yay shoes! Whatcha get? (I am a climbing shoe geek, so always interested in hearing other people's reports.)

And alas for inconveniently-timed resets. Though at least there will be all-new things for next time.

[weirdquark]

They're Mad Rock, one of the beginner ones. I don't remember seeing the model name anywhere obvious so I don't know which one while not looking at them though I'm sure it says somewhere. They were orange and had velcro? Looking at the MadRock website, they were probably the Flash -- the store did have a model that they said was specifically a woman's shoe but it wasn't it, so probably Flash and not OnSight.

And that's about all the report I can give without getting to climb in them for an hour -- they seemed reasonably solid on the footholds on the pole and when I tried stepping up on the box-tables they had in the store using very little of my toe I was able to do so using very little of my toe, so they seem nicely stiff and solid and felt tight but not too painful for the time I had them on, which wasn't very long.

I also tried out a pair of Evols in the store but those felt uncomfortably tight and when I went up a half size still felt like they pinched in the toe even though they looked wider than the MadRocks and didn't feel as stable around the ankle so I didn't get 'em.

[rydra_wong]

when I tried stepping up on the box-tables they had in the store using very little of my toe I was able to do so using very little of my toe, so they seem nicely stiff and solid and felt tight but not too painful for the time I had them on, which wasn't very long.

I also tried out a pair of Evols in the store but those felt uncomfortably tight and when I went up a half size still felt like they pinched in the toe even though they looked wider than the MadRocks and didn't feel as stable around the ankle so I didn't get 'em.

*nods*

Sounds like you've got a really good fit for your shoe shape and size, then. Fingers crossed they break in nicely and work well for you!