We climbed. It was hard.

Brian and I spent a long morning at TRC, enjoying the peace and quiet that nice weather brings to the stale, sweaty gym (because climbers with more sense/time are at the Gunks). Our day in a haiku nutshell:

We climbed, and climbed more.
It was hard and we were beat.
Then: Chickens Gone Wild.

In a little more detail, we lead a bunch of climbs on the vertical/slightly overhanging face in the central area. There's a slew of new routes, including an Obe 10 with committing reachy moves (blue) and a long wandering 10+ that starts up the underside of the arch, diagonals across, crosses the lip and ends on thin delicate moves on the vertical face (red). Tried leading one of the 12s (green): big, dynamic reachy moves up along the overhanging arete, few feet except an occasional heel hook, holds thinning out the higher you get - thanks for the catch, Brian!

Finished off with a little tired bouldering, we mostly sat around and discovered routes with really dificult starting moves, though I finally managed to tick off the problem (black and yellow, V5) Brian stole from under my nose a few sessions ago (sneaky Asians...).

Three bars of death

Warm-up:
deadlifts
cleans

Crossfit WOD 030308

Linda, aka "Three bars of death"
10-9-8-7-6-5-4-3-2-1 reps of the triplet:
Deadlift: 1.5 x body weight (210 = 1.5 x BW)
Bench press: 1 x body weight (115 = 0.82 x BW)
Clean: 0.75 x body weight (115 = 0.82 x BW)

Set up three bars and storm through for time.

BL: 53:21 (4:23,7:46,6:58,7:30,7:52,6:05,4:46,3:35,3:00,1:23)

Full squat cleans. No bench available, so I did floor presses instead. I thought these might be easier but they weren't, the eccentric portion was harder cause I was trying not to smash my elbows into the floor.

I was pretty nervous beforehand given how Linda destroyed me last time. I wasn't disappointed this time around. No other workout has produced anything like the misery I feel after 2 rounds with Linda.

"Know how sublime a thing it is
To suffer and be strong."

-Henry Wadsworth Longfellow, "The Light of Stars"

HT to Sean Manseau for the quote.

I never want to ever miss
The sweet rewards of nuptial bliss
So I will do my level best
To never climb Mount Everest

-Anon In: GAC Binnie et al., Editors, England now, The Lancet/Hodder and Stoughton, London (1989), p. 73.

Julie Smith captured this stunning photo from 28,000' of the shadow cast by Mt. Everest at 5am on 23 May 2006. She reached the summit two hours later. It was her third attempt on Everest in as many years. Source

Triage haiku

Is it just soreness,
Or rhabdomyolysis?
Urinalysis!

Til squats do us part

warmup varied

workout:
15 reps of BW back squats, 3/4 BW front squats, and 1/2 BW OHS
for lowest set amount

ED: (1x15, 1x15, 4,6,5)
SS: (3x5, 3x5, 3x5)
KL: (10,5, 1x15, 8,5,2)

cooldown:

pullup ladder

ED (assisted, 30#): 7
SS: 7
KL: 7

This was a pretty good workout to get back into things. Seems like everyone's been slacking since I've been gone so it's time to get back into it. Everyone did really well on the squats, though the workout was definitely harder than we anticipated. Both KL and ED blew through their first sets of squats but took more time on the OHS. KL had some problems with numbness in his hands towards the end of the OHS set.

Lab Haiku

Guess who's who?
---

Graduate student,
All alone with his monkey.
And maybe a song.

Despite the brilliance
Gets untracked when... Ooooh, is that
A shiny object?

Statistical thought
Best applied to good data
Like how much I lift.