Saturday, January 09, 2010

No More Training

In two and a half hours I'm going over the edge of the canyon at the Ouray Ice Park. In the 24 hours after that I'm going to climb out as many times as I can, belayed by 24 great people, helped by dozens more, and motivated by all of you who have made a donation to the dZi foundation, sent encouraging words, and just plain old been enthusiastic. Thanks!

We think we've sorted a live web cam on the https://www.endlessascent.org/ site so you can follow along with the battle. There's a functioning donation button there even if you're Canadian (postal codes threw it for a loop initially).

I just finished a huge breakfast after an early breakfast. Calories in, effort out. Here we go!!

Monday, January 04, 2010

Better...

The Ice Park emptied out yesterday--I always see the park in the midst of the ice festival, when hundreds of climbers attack the hundreds of routes (Hundred? There sure are a lot!). But by about 2:00 yesterday things were slowing down, and Jason N. and I got in there for some speed laps. 20 minutes on, 20 off, giving it! Three sets of that, then I did a solo session into the dark for a bit to up the distance. I bought a new ascender thing from Ouray Mountain Sports which made the whole process much smoother. Did about 30 laps again, but the difference in how I felt from the last session was huge.

For starters, don't dry your socks with fabric softener--this makes them incredibly slippery in your boots, which sucks when standing on frontpoints... Figuring out why my heels were lifting so much and why my calfs were cramping so bad in the last session was positive, way better to figure that out now than during the climb! I was also low on calories last session I think, but a huge burger the night before along with some other food plus a concerted effort to get a whack of calories down my throat during the day. In the last week I've been sick, traveling, eating irregularly, it just hasn't been that good. But it doesn't take all that long to put the pieces back together if given some time and quality food (I don't normally eat hamburgers, but the burger at Drake's in Ridgway is the absolute best thing I've eaten in months, insane!). I'm also already much better adapted to the altitude--you wouldn't think going to 8,5000 feet from 4,500 would make that big a difference, but it does when you're going hard. Plus seeing more friends and just getting the mojo going is worth a lot, the energy is building.

I'm training today and Wednesday and then I'm done with that, it's game time on Saturday at high noon.