Aaron's Status

4:12 pm

Jet lag sucks. Sure it’s only three hours, but dang, this west-to-east travel thing is the pits and someone should do something about it. I’m not remotely sleepy at 9pm, and 5am comes and goes before I even know what happened. Because I’m asleep.

I’m slowly adjusting, I just like to whine about it. I was a zombie at work on Thursday, but felt pretty normal on Friday. It was great to have a whole day with no obligations on Saturday to just rest my back and my mind.

I played a fair bit of Cyberpunk 2077, did a few household chores, and otherwise made myself as sluggish as physically possible. I think I stayed in pajamas for most of the day.

Today we would normally take the kid to his climbing class, but they’re on hiatus between sessions (and for the holiday I guess), so instead we all went to the South Boston gym. I don’t get to go there often because it’s far and harder to get to due to traffic and all, so it’s always exciting for me.

I still have a fair amount of anxiety about my back, and when I woke up this morning it was not feeling good. I have been laying on the heating pad in the morning like I used to do and I think that has actually helped. The PT routine felt fine, so off we went to the gym.

At the gym itself I felt fine and that was a great relief to me. I had committed to toplining, which I continue to think is somehow “lower impact” than bouldering but I’m not sure that’s even true. I warmed up on a couple of 5.8 routes and then set my sights on the 10s.

I flashed two very tricky red 5.10s, which I considered a win. The wife pointed me at a green 5.11 that looked pretty doable so I took a stab at it and it turned out to be trickier than I thought. I did send it after a few tries, though.

While working on the green one, I saw another guy working on a red 5.11 on the adjacent corner that looked pretty spicy. Lots of slopers. I decided to give that one a go.

The red one was hard. It took me at least a couple of tries to get halfway, and then another try or two to get to the top. I touched the last hold but lost my grip and fell off two times. At that point, I felt like I needed a longer rest, and also felt shaky, so I went to the front desk and bought a Clif bar.

I ate my protein bar, drank some water, took my shoes off, and hung out with everyone else in the boulder area until I felt fully rested and went back for another go. I flew up the thing and unequivocally sent it. The beauty of rest!

One of the big take-aways here is that learning the beta that works in each piece and executing it efficiently saves a ton of energy. I had it dialed in enough that I could just shoot right up to the top before my grip gave out.

I also sent a few boulder problems but nothing that feels worth writing about. Just glad to be able to climb without discomfort, and feeling pretty strong!

Back to work tomorrow. Short week, two Thanksgivings, a bunch of driving… Should be fun.