Climbing like a blindfolded hippopotamus
A story about the frustrations (and thrills) of getting back into a sport after many months away.
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I went climbing this week for the first time since pandemic life started. It’s been one of the activities at the top of my post-vax wish list. I had gotten real into climbing before we all retreated into lockdown mode and it was one of the (relatively small) but very real things that I was sad to lose to Covid.
There was a lot that felt very different from the last time I set foot in the bouldering gym over a year ago. Masks were required, of course. There was red tape on the floor for social-distancing guidance, a hand-sanitizing station outside the door, and the water fountains and showers were all powered down.
Also, I was about a million degrees more terrible than the last time I climbed.
I was falling, failing, and flailing on problems I could’ve cruised up a year ago. I watched with envy as small children scaled the rainbow of holds with the ease of a monkey while I fumbled around like a blindfolded hippopotamus. And the top of the wall seemed like it had gotten much higher than the last time I was in there – it loomed above me, feeling as far away as the top of the Dawn Wall and bullying me about my fear of heights.
I would not have described myself as a “good” climber before covid walloped us. But, I was definitely a *better* climber than I am now. I got into climbing after running Cascade Crest in August of 2019, because I wanted to get more comfortable with heights and develop more confidence and skills for moving around rocky and exposed terrain – something I hoped would translate to some more technical alpine objectives.
But what started as “skill building” and “something to do during the off-season,” became something I really, truly loved. I found myself at the climbing gym several times a week – well past the end of my off-ish season. I thought about how to solve bouldering problems while I was at home. And I started playing around with outdoor rock climbing, hungry for more ways to explore this new hobby.
One of the very fun and addictive things about getting into something new is that it gifts you with so many exciting milestones as you progress. Getting into sports like skiing and climbing brings me back to training for my first marathon when each weekend was a new “longest run ever!” I felt like such a running superstar as I got stronger and kept collecting new running achievements every single week.
Climbing offered me so much of that same excitement as I was getting more and more into it: the first time I climbed to the top of the wall! My first pink problem! And purple! The first time I climbed a harder problem on the first try!
It’s more difficult to get that same kind of encouraging progress through running these days. After training, racing, and running for 15-ish years, I’ve hit a lot of those more reachable milestones. And I would break myself in about a week and a half if I tried to keep hitting a new longest-distance-ever on the reg’.
Climbing was an outlet that easily and consistently gave me that joy of improvement and discovery and I loved it. But Covid brought a swift halt to all that fun growth and exploration. And when I was back at the gym yesterday, I didn’t feel as excited about climbing as I did a year ago, I mostly just felt discouraged by how much I’ve lost while I was away from the wall.
As I sat on the mat, watching toddlers climb circles around me and swimming laps through my own defeat, I remembered when I started to train for the PCT and went on one of my first long runs of the spring. It was a 16-mile loop around Eugene and by the time I was getting back toward my house, I was feeling deader than a piece of roadkill.
“How the hell am I going to run across the state of Oregon?” I thought, as I was shuffling through my fourteenth mile of the day and finding it very difficult to believe I would ever be able to do 60 miles in one push, nevermind 8 days of back-to-back-to-back-to-back 100ks.
But, of course, as I kept training, I got stronger and stronger and went from struggling my way through a 16-mile run to being able to run across the state of Oregon.
And even though I felt real wretched while I was huffing and puffing my way through those first long runs of the training cycle, when I look back on it, I wonder if that reality was maybe actually kind of a gift. Because it gave me some of that same joy of improvement and momentum of progress. The start of every training cycle or return from a break can be a chance to get that satisfaction and encouragement of watching ourselves get stronger as we keep training for new things - even if the thing itself is far from a new endeavor.
It may be pretty hard for me to redefine my longest run ever at this point, but pretty much every year, I get to start working my way back up the ladder of training distances and paces, and one of the things that helps give me confidence in myself along the way is seeing myself get stronger as time and training progresses. When I go from struggling through 16 miles to feeling good on my first 20 mile run a few weeks later to feeling great on a burly mountain run.
And we’re not actually starting from ground zero when we come back from an off season, even it feels like we are. When people ask me how I trained to run the Oregon PCT, I always say I was training for it for years, because all of that physical and mental work over the course of my relationship with running offered a foundation that helped me tackle the Oregon PCT. My readiness for that run was based on way more than just the miles I put in during the months leading up to it, even if it felt like I was starting from scratch during those initial long runs.
Back at the climbing gym, I was staring down a pink problem on the slab wall that had shut me down. I would get a few moves up and then panic and jump off the wall, afraid to push myself to reach for the next hold.
After watching my friends tackle their own climbs, I marched back over to it and grabbed the first hold, placing my feet on the perches just above the floor. I moved through the initial moves with much smoother transitions than the time before, feeling a little better and a little more comfortable and a little less like a blindfolded hippo on the wall.
But as I got higher up, my heart pumped harder.
I reached the spot where I had bailed during my last attempt. I looked up at the next hold, that would require me to reach beyond what felt comfortable or good.
I shakily grabbed for it and pulled myself to the next foothold. My heart was drumming into my chest. I was now just one move away from the top of the wall.
My palm was clammy with sweat and my thigh shook with fear as I eyed the top of the wall taunting me from above. I would need to trust a piece of plastic the size of a golf ball to support my body as I reached for it.
I pushed off that teeny little foothold and swung my arm up, hooking my hand over the top of the wall.
I let out a whoop and pumped my free fist into the air. It was far from my first time reaching the top of the climbing wall and something that was a very routine part of climbing a year ago – but it felt a lot like that first tour to the top as I made that final move and that same rush of joy and achievement hit me.
As I walked out of the gym with pummeled arms and stinging hands, I felt determined to come back a little less discouraged about how much fitness/strength/courage/skills/all of the things that I’ve lost over the last year and a little more excited about getting it all back again - and getting to feel more of that joy of improvement and exploration that made it so much fun the first time.
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