Wednesday, June 23, 2010

Thursday, June 3, 2010

Work and Climb

The theme for the past few weeks has been 'no rest for the wicked'. This is a good thing. I've been occupied with climbing, hiking, Adam's version of cross-fit (tree work) and not much else. The only downside is how tired I've been in the evenings (and mornings) as a result. I've even fallen asleep while talking to Becky on video chat.

Just about every climber I talked to about tree work warned me of the debilitating fatigue I'd suffer from. They all said every climber that does construction or some other type of manual labor for a living is always too tired to climb. In response I've tried to keep a positive outlook by thinking of all the burly climbers that manage to make the combination work, guys like Jesse Bonin, Adam Strong, and Ramon Julian Puigblanque.

Though the fatigue is definitely there, I feel like my body has adapted pretty well and I've managed to get up a couple of really cool boulder problems. This Wednesday was a perfect example of a very exhausting, but satisfying day. Woke up at 7am, at work by 8am. Work ended a little early around 3pm so I headed back to the house to run Turtle. Bolted from there to the grocery store for food and then drove up to the Rocky Mountain National Park to meet up with my friend Herm. Finally, we headed up the trail to Chaos Canyon around 5:45pm (approximately 1,500' elevation gain). Arrived to the 'Green 45' boulder in Chaos to find some cold dry conditions. Barely managed to warm-up and snuck in an ascent of an outstanding boulder problem called "Wildcat" before heading back down to the cars after 8pm. Got back to the house around 9:20pm, which left me just enough time to eat and video chat with Becky briefly before going to bed.

Its a good feeling being tired for the reasons that I'm tired.

I think I could get used to this lifestyle.