Had an awesome day at the Sydney Indoor Climbing Gym out at St Peters.
Thought I hadn't been there before but it turned out I actually had, years go. They still had us on the records.
I was reminded what a small world it was when I ran into Greg, a climber I met in Perth (who lives in Sydney). He was getting a lead pass with his partner Binh and I jumped in to get mine too.
It was awesome visiting a bigger gym with so many new climbs (new to me anyways). I was like a kid in a candy store!!!
Spent a few hours - maybe 3 hours or so. Very much worth delaying lunch for the experience. :D
View from where I'll be sleeping tonight.
(: ˙dılɟ ɥʇıʍ ƃuıʎɐld ʇsnɾ
Oh well I should really get some rest anyways. Didn't quite get the packing done, but will sort it out in the morning.
Had a decent session on the lead walls tonight, especially when I went in feeling quite tired after yesterdays efforts - ticked two 24's on both occasions (including a new one last night) and this evening even started to down climb (on a lower grade) after one of them. Also shortened the rest in between, signs of improvements I think. Finished off by busting out a decent set of chin ups on both evenings.
Another week flat out.
Monday: up early for chiropractor - work - climbing - dinner - sleep
Tuesday: work - rest day spent chilling in the evening with the family (inc dinner) - sleep
Wednesday: work - gym - dinner - sleep
Thursday: work - climbing - dinner - sleep (soon)
Plan for Friday: up early for chiropractor - work - climbing - dinner - packing my bags - sleep
I seem to be in a mode where I go to work, then when I finish I either go to the gym or go climbing, finish that pretty late, grab dinner and bit of TV and Internet and then crash. Not much time to settle and think. Need to make some sacrifices, so I think the TV watching is going to have to go by the wayside and I'm going to have to get to sleep earlier so that I can switch the schedule up a little.
Maybe try to cram in a light dinner after work before jumping into the physical activities. Hmmm, would that make me feel too full/heavy?
Anyways I'm off to Sydney next week so I'll have some time to ponder how I can change things up. Work travel should be much less this year, new budgets and changes in structure will probably mean that I won't need to fly as much. So I guess I should make the most of my trip. Might get in some climbing at one of the gyms there, don't think I can wrangle an outdoor trip in the short time I have.
Seems that the morning session wasn't enough so we hit Rockface in the late afternoon for more action.
We did a some quick warmup climbs (2 leads up and down) and then it was onto some harder stuff.
Finally got on to complete one of my goals I set myself a couple of weeks back, which was to complete two grade 24 lead climbs cleanly in one session.
Was still feeling pretty strong at the end of it to complete a grade 19 lead and also downclimb it.
Cheers to James again for playing Mr. Paparazzi.
After the morning climbing session on Sunday I headed over to the folks' place to start work on my old aquarium. It had been sitting there dormant for over a year and after a bit (read a lot) of prompting from Mum I was to get it prepped up for Dad.
Forgot how much lugging of water was involved, along with washing of gravel, etc. Although the worst point was when I had to manually suck on one of the filter outlets to get the filter flowing and try not to ingest any of the manky water. Urk!
Now we have a funky green tank (whilst the water is being treated), that just needs to be settled in for a week or so before we can go fish shopping. That's the fun part. :)
Woke up to a bit of a false start on Sunday, didn't want to leave the warmth of the bed, so I messaged Arty and delayed our meeting by half and hour. Still wasn't enough time to fall back asleep but bought me enough time to wake my mind up.
Anyways we did eventually make it to Mountain Quarry to have a play on some real rocks. After a bit of a warm up (Left Edge 16 and another 16'ish climb) we moved over to Urban Ethics (22). According to the Perth Rock Climbing Guide this climb is apparently "a right of passage for many Perth climbers" (just noticed that today when I was browsing through the guidebook).
Well I had a big red F on my ticket this day as I struggled with the lower moves before finally getting on with the show and cleaning up the rest of the climb. Arty on the other hand was reversed, smashing the smaller lower stages and coming off on the top crux. We figured that if we'd combined our abilities we'd have a pretty decent climber (or also quite possibly a really crappy one).
Cheers to James for coming out and working the camera.
Haven't really had much to post this week, performance reviews at work so extra stress and pressure for all involved. Not to mention we'll have some projects kicking off in full steam soon.
Ah well to keep my sanity, I go chasing endorphins...Went to the gym on Monday and tried out my new program, thanks Natacha it definitely killed me! Jeez my last program was a walk in the park in comparison.
Lots of climbing this week, basically went after work on Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday and Friday. :P
Tuesday and Wednesday was a bit of training (did 24 and 26 climbs respectively), Thursday and Friday was a little more on the social side of things.
it's been pretty cold in the mornings so fully struggling to get out of bed early to get energetic. Instead it's been mostly workouts in the evening (which unfortunately means that I eat and sleep later aswell).
On another note definitely feeling a bit of wanderlust...it was this time last year when I was making plans for a roadtrip.
Sheesh! Sunday night already, these weekends go by way too fast.
Well I sorta had a slack day on Saturday, it was raining so I hit the snooze button and slept in (a couple of times). Figured a little more rest might help me shake this cold. I finally dragged my sorry butt out of bed and did some stuff around the house, usual domestics - laundry, cleaning the place, etc.
The rain didn't really abate as I went out to the stores and somehow end up spending way more money at Target than I'd originally planned. (They had a pretty decent sale on!) Ran into my old manager there but we didn't really make eye contact and chat. Kind of weird considering we normally have the awkward "How are you? What are you up to these days?" conversation, I was all geared up for it when I heard her voice. But she was too busy running around and I didn't go out of my way to say "Hi".
Anyways the two homestay kids from Taiwan went home that evening and they left us a card with some very nice comments. Cliff mentioned that he saw me as a bit of an older brother...I feel like a bad person for not really spending that much time with them. :(
Today...well the morning was a little pre-occuppied with some system problems in Sydney playing on my mind. I did end up getting out to Mountain Quarry to catch up with the fellas. It was a beautiful day and I hadn't really planned on climbing (although I still had all my gear with me in my car). My original plan was just to go out and take some photos, that plan quickly died when I discovered both my camera batteries were flat. D'oh, what a rookie mistake...I normally keep them decently charged, but hadn't used my camera for a little while since it was repaired. I did manage to get a few shots off before the batteries gave out on me.
With that turn of events I ended up joining in on some climbing. :P We tried two climbs that I hadn't tried before "Urban Ethics" and "Powerplay". Struggled on the first one having not really warmed up and still slowed by the cold, but pretty sure that it'll be ticked under different circumstances, the second climb was more of a crankfest and we had it set up on top rope, so no worries there.
Tried to get on with my third week of OHPU training in the evening, but failed miserably on the fourth set. Will try again tomorrow, hopefully it's just because of the cold.
Anyways I can't believe that the weekend is over already.
