Climbing, Skiing, Travel

I've been under the gun a bit lately trying to finish everything up before heading to Scotland and Norway, plus there's a German TV show shoot in there and some other stuff, hence the lax bloggage.

Tonight I was planning to just chill out and write a bit after a solid day of training, but then Josh showed up and heckled me into doing some crazy ski moutaineering AT race tomorrow morning. Something like 3800 feet of up and then down with some more up and down in the middle at a local ski area. Lasty year I switched to ancient AT gear because it was easier than using my tele gear for skiing into ice climbs, but I haven't skied in real AT boots with my heels locked down in at least 20 years--I've been a "meadow skipper" telemarker for the last 20. This year I scored some new BD skis, AT bindings and Scarpa boots--it was all in boxes in my garage until Josh showed up, a frantic couple of hours later we had it all put together. My first run with real AT gear will be after I finish the first "up" bit of tomorrow's race, should be pretty comical. All my normal ski gear is vintage tele gear from the late 90s--now I'm looking at fat skis, new skins, new boots, it's like Christmas but I really don't have a clue how to use any of it. Josh gave me the crash course in fat skin removal (sticky bastards) and so on, but my experience with AT gear could be charitably described as minimal. But I'll bet racing will be more fun than not racing, plus it should be a savage aerobic death fest. I'm fired up to gasp like a goldfish for a few hours, the experience should be interesting and tomorrow is an upper-body rest day anyhow. We'll see how it goes...

Workouts:

Had a great day out today with JD in Hafner Cave. This is the "default" climbing area for me, it's the fastest access around for fun, hard climbing. We did laps on the new M9 (?) to the right of Fire Roasted. Fell off the very top on the big flat blocks on the on-sight, always annoying but I got careless. After getting really pumped running up and down laps we then drove back to Canmore and hit the Vsion for some "Power," and it did indeed take all the power away as planned. I set a new "tracking" drytool problem (30 move problem, longer than many routes) in there last week, it's got a lot of "Steel Koan" style hard climbing, big moves and dangling. Worked on that a bit then did front levers and campus action, I love days like this, just giving it, I feel like I've done something worthwhile with the day.

The workouts for the last few days haven been consistent if not inspired. I'm missing a big goal, a route or a comp or something coming up, so I'm training until that happens. Scotland and Norway should be more about long days out, so I've been running and skate skiing a bit too to build some sort of cardio base. The workload with non-climbing projects has really bitten into my "long day out time," but the results of the desk time are satisfying too. My pinkie fingers are also pretty mangled right now, the swings on Steel Koan put high loads on them. I've got about a half inch of dead skin padding on each little finger but think I've bruised the bone underneath, it's really sore. Maybe this means my training has been more intense than I realized...