Date: June 29th, 2012
I don’t have all that many “rules” about ice climbing, but one I try to follow is to not go ice climbing when it’s raining, or when there’s a lot of running water and not much ice. I’ve had a few scary experiences with running water and ice, but not quite as exciting as this crew had! Well done to the team who threw him a top-rope! And thanks to Rock and Ice for the heads up.
Posted in: Blog
Date: June 26th, 2012
Making time to breathe.
Eat Pho, not McDonalds.
I’m now 45 years old. A middle aged guy. My life has changed radically with each decade, and I’ve done a lot of stuff that isn’t really award-worthy. But there has almost always been one constant that I’m actually proud of: Nearly every single day I do something physical. I count every hour in motion as a victory. Every time I slip out of the house when the kids are asleep in the morning or evening and bike, hike, run, ski or just walk for an hour or two it’s a victory. You see, as someone smarter once figured out, an object in motion tends to stay in motion, and an object at rest tends to stay at rest. So if I stay at rest for more than a day or two then I’m likely to stay there. Screw that, I’ve got to keep in motion. I can see what happens to people when they stop moving. They die.
I figure the type of movement is less important than the movement itself. I see a super fat lady out walking up a steep hill on a street and think, “Damn, that must be hard. You are a legend. All the houses you’re walking past right now? They’re full of people who make excuses not to get out and walk. And you’re out here going at it. You’re my hero.” I never say this because I don’t want to seem patronizing, but I truly feel it. I see the old guy cranking the Grouse Grind and think, “I want to be you.” I value my stolen hour in the gym as much as I value a day in the mountains; a day in the mountains is easy once you’ve left the desk, but the day I had to fight for an hour at the gym was a victory over life’s demands. And every day in the mountains was surely a great day too…
I go through airports all the time and see what the North American “lifestyle” is doing to people. The farther south you go in North America in general the fatter people get. And airports are where nutritional truth is revealed; I just finished up a meal at an airport restaurant and spent some time perusing what other people were eating. As usual, the rather large dude had a massive plate of nachos, a fried burrito disaster literally dripping with something gelatinous, and a diet Coke. The skinny bastard had a beer, tacos, and left most of the chips (not me, I was hungry as hell and ate ’em). I got onto the last flight of the day behind two large people carrying a bag full of licorice and other sugar; their kids were already super sized, and that just sucks for them. What sucks more is that huge parents and fat elementary-school kids are now the norm, not the exception. Something is wrong.
Look at the lineup to McDonalds in the airport or any food court and then look at the lineup at the “Edo” place. I guarantee the lineup at the burger (read burger with huge white bread bun, huge fries, huge milkshake/apple pie etc) stand will be far fatter than any other lineup (and the costs aren’t all that different so no excuses there). If you want to see what people truly eat study airport dining, it’s like watching life through a one-way mirror. And then look at the people who walk the stairs vs. ride the escalator, who stand on the conveyor belts instead walking. Things get real clear real quick: Eat shitty food and avoid exercise and you’ll stop moving and get larger. And once you get past a certain point it’s a lot harder to move (my hero lady aside). And if you stop moving you die. We’re all circling the drain every day of our lives; move faster and you stay farther from the hole for longer, like a marble in the sink.
But making time to breathe can be hard. You have to fight for it. I’m proud of the times I win the fight to breathe hard. Today I had three business meetings in two cities separated by an hour’s drive, plus the flight home. I got up early and had one of the best hour-long hike/runs I’ve had in years in the mountains near Ogden, Utah. I revel in the landscape of the American west; it’s literally intoxicating to me. The scrub oak, the smells, the dirt, I love it, and I would have missed it if I hadn’t gotten up early. As I struggled up to a ridge and then scrambled along the rocks and back down I felt life was beautiful in a way I would not have experienced if I’d lazed over breakfast instead of getting a coffee and moving. That’s all the time difference I really needed: coffee and go vs. sitting down. I ended my last meeting with just enough time to scrape in 45 minutes at the climbing gym on the way to the airport. Then it was a mad sprint to the airport, drop the rental car, do a “dry” shower in the airport bathroom, onto the flight. You think I’m bragging? I am. I hear people bragging about how many beers they drank the night before like it’s an accomplishment. Well it is sometimes, but I’m way more proud of every single day I’ve spent some time sucking oxygen hard than I am of the times I drank too much, slept in, wasted time sending useless but somehow important emails or whatever. Because as I look back at those wasted days there was almost always an hour or two I could have sliced out to get out and breathe. I hate those wasted days; I have never regretted working out, going for a walk, getting on a plane stinking, not once. In fact, I’ve loved every single experience. But we all try to be busy instead of being alive, be busy instead of getting out and breathing, be busy instead of being productive, be busy sending useless texts instead of walking in the woods with our kids or running there with our friends…. I do it too, but I’m missing the point of life when I let “busy” replace “breathing.”
And lately I’ve been hanging out with some people who don’t get the beautiful luxury of being able to just go out and move, whether it’s in the mountains or the gym or whatever. Their broken or malfunctioning bodies won’t let them. Yet they still fight for time outside in the sun, drink in the day, and exercise as best they can. If they can fight to literally breathe at all and still exercise, if the fat lady can get out the door and move, if the guy in the business suit can jam the stairs instead of the escalator just for the sheer hell of it then most of us have no excuses at all. Keep moving, keep breathing, keep the inertia on your side. Rest days should be a welcome anomaly, not a way of life. And avoid lineups with lots of morbidly obese people in them, it’s a sign of what the future looks like if you spend too much time in the same places… Airports, American chain restaurants and conveyer belts all move us closer to the drain hole. Keep the good momentum up. Life’s more fun when you move.
Posted in: Blog
Date: June 4th, 2012
I’m racing in the Red Bull Divide and Conquer on June 16th. It’s a team-relay style race up and around Grouse Mountain. My team, Arc’teryx is strong: Adam Campbell is doing the running portion, Aruthr Gaillot is our mountain biker, and then there’s me, the kayaker. I figure I’m the weak link, but am doing everything I can to get up to speed on downriver racing in two weeks. A week ago I went out and fore-ran all the “good parts” of the course with the all-star team of Vancouver area talent that is organizing each leg. First Gary Robbins cheerfully talked while I neared the puking stage on the way up Grouse (neat running course, all sorts of techno/lush terrain, beautiful). I have a torn/tweaked right hamstring right now that doesn’t allow for much running, but let’s be honest: I couldn’t run that course if it were lined with $1000 bills you could only grab at a running pace… It’s just savage. I felt pretty humbled to think how high the level of mountain running really is today; some sports I can sort of see from where I stand, but running up something like the Grouse Grind a couple of times and down and around, fast, just blows me away. I look forward to watching it.
Next up was the mountain biking. I was feeling a little worked by the hike/run, and some relaxing mostly downhill mountain biking sounded pleasant after a lunch of pizza. Now, I’ve been mountain biking for a long time, and on my home trails I can hang with everyone but the racers. So I was feeling pretty confident as I clipped into the pedals on a “light free ride” bike, a Rocky Mountain Slayer, and headed down the course following some guy named Andreas, and with Scott from Red Bull. We were off on a “best of” tour of the mountain biking course that started with huge snow banks–it’s still winter on top of Grouse for sure. We soon dropped into the single track, and my head fully blew up. I casually followed at the same speed as the other two guys into what I can only describe as complete fucking mayhem on a mountain bike. Rocks, logs, roots, rain, slime, madness. And my two riding partners just hammered it. I’ve only ridden on the North Shore once before, and that was on easier trails with full armour, a full-face helmet, platform pedals and at low speeds with frequent stops to chill out and scope lines. This was different. My goals went from, “ride it fast with the boys” to “Avoid broken bones, excessive blood loss (some was inevitable), and dental surgery.” Andreas has won the Trans-Rockies three times, raced in the Olympics, and looks his bike is grafed directly into his brain. Scott rides all the time on the North Shore and area, and is also bad ass on a bike; he’s a “weekend warrior” that has lived for skiing and riding for decades, and it shows.
Most of the “technical” riding here in the Rockies isn’t very technical in comparison to the North Shore. The average afternoon ride around Canmore might have a few places that’ll slow you down, but I might clip out of my pedals once or twice on a ride if that. I don’t think I made it more than about 500 feet on whatever madness we were riding on Grouse without clipping out. Finally I just had to accept that I suck, slow down, and then it became one of the all-time funnest things I’ve ever done. I used to BMX and do ride enough that I can mostly stay upright, just not at speed. I’d watch Andreas style something, then Scott, then I’d bump and bounce down it. One day of that is worth a summer in Canmore for getting better at technical riding. I rode almost everything, and seldom have I had so much fun getting so humbled. Thanks to Andreas and Scott for an absolutely stellar experience. I finally crashed after styling a steep section; I got too confident and went into the next section blind and with some speed. I’m glad I still remember how to shoulder-roll in rocky terrain… My knee is still blue, but it’s not broken. I simply can not imagine anyone RACING down that course. Oh, and the uphills were on the same terrain, and boys were riding up it. At speed. I thought I was going to get back into the game on the uphills as I’m normally decent at that, but no, hind tit was my spot yet again. Full respect to the North Shore, Andreas and Scott, and to any of you psychos who are going to RACE that course! I may have to move to BC and deal with the slugs, rain, slow-ass hipsters and other issues at some point just to learn how to ride that terrain. Bike7_loco
I don’t think I’ve ever been happier to see a kayak and a river than I was at the Cleveland Dam put in for the Capilano river. I’ve only run this stretch of river once, maybe 20 years ago, and it was just a pleasure to be back on it. I ended up solo as my guide was down with pneumonia or something, but I felt far, far safer than I did during the mountain bike. I used it as training session and did intervals and then floated in the mossy,cool world of the canyon. I swear my brain was over-heated from the mountain biking, the river cooled it down. There are some decent drops in it, but it’s going to be a hammer-down race rather than a more typical creek-style race. It was cool to go from the snow on the top of Grouse all the way back to the ocean, through three very different experiences. The kayaking is going to be brutal too (race pace under 45 minutes?), but I’m pretty sure it’s the safest of the three courses!
I’m still not sure what boat I’m going to paddle. The rules require boats nine feet or less, which doesn’t leave that many options. And some of the nine-foot boats are actually longer when measured unfortunately. My old Nomad seems about as fast as anything else out there, but the bow is annoyingly wide for getting a good efficient downriver stroke going. I’ll be trying some more boats today…
I’ve been training a ton the last few weeks for the paddling, and riding my bike when I need to rest my upper body. You can see some of that here; my new Suunto Ambit is pretty neat, tracks here.
Posted in: Blog
