What it actually looks like.

Marathon done, back on the wall on Thursday

On Sunday I ran the marathon from Lindau, 3:36:33 net, 5:07 per kilometre. I had a plan for the pace and then went out more aggressively than that plan said. It all held together, the calf included, the one that pulled on the black level 6 three weeks before the race. Over 42 kilometres I did not feel it once.

Today is the train back to Hamburg, and my legs feel properly done.

On Thursday I plan to be back on the wall, after two and a half weeks off, as planned. At urban apes the problems for Get High are up, their four-week bouldering competition, and I want to try them if my body plays along. The black level 6 is back on the list too. Whether the break has cost me anything, I will find out there.

One week without climbing, five days to the marathon

It has been a week since the last session at Boulderwelt. Five days to go until the marathon on 11 October, and then at least another week before I am back on the wall.

What I miss most is the crew, the evenings with them. But also the gyms themselves, just being there. And of course the climbing.

There is not much to fill the gap with right now. I am in the taper before the race, so I am running less as well. At the moment I am not really doing much of anything.

What surprised me is how quickly the feeling of getting worse came. Not after a few weeks, straight away. Whether one week really costs anything, I cannot tell yet. The yellow level 6 will tell me when I am back.

Last session before the marathon, then two and a half weeks off

Tonight I go bouldering for the last time before the marathon on 11 October. After that I take a break until at least the Sunday after the race, so about two and a half weeks.

Before the race because of the injury risk. I know the pattern from the last entry well enough. The calf is fine, by the way, running I notice nothing anymore. After the race to keep the load under control.

I find it annoying. I will not see the people I usually climb with, and projects stay unticked, including the black level 6 from the last entry. I hope it is still up when I come back. Then there is the rhythm, and in the end simply the climbing.

I already have mixed feelings about tonight, but I want to do it one more time. I have also not been to Boulderwelt in a long while. I am going on my own on purpose, with the handbrake on: not too much risk, and go easy on the calf.

Update, in the evening: just under two hours, eleven boulders, ten of them done, seven on the first go. Most were level 4 and 5, which by Boulderwelt's own conversion is Font 5B to 6A+.

At the end a dynamic level 6 went down, Font 6B to 6B+, on the twelfth go. It is set as a run up and jump, and that is exactly how I climbed it, because it felt like the logical way.

The handbrake held anyway, even though there was a fair amount of dynamic climbing in it. On a level 7, Font 6C to 6C+, I did every move except the crux in the middle, a jump onto a volume. That one I left out. The calf did not say a word, neither while climbing nor afterwards.

Finishing on a project simply felt good. What I find a shame is leaving the new one: yellow, also level 6, twelve goes, and the jump in the middle has not held yet. And above all the level 7, where only the crux is missing.

One jump to an intermediate jug, three weeks out from a marathon

The plan said strength session, three weeks out from the marathon. I swapped it for a spontaneous bouldering session on my project: level 6 at urban apes, the top of what I climb there. There is no official conversion, my guess is 6C to 6C+. I had every move on its own and in overlapping links, so this was a send attempt.

The crux sits deep in the overhang, and its second half is meant as a run and jump: swing off a jug into a running sequence, then jump from the run to the next jug. I climb it half static, because that is how it works out for me. The swing becomes a compression move, and instead of the run and jump I do two smaller jumps via an intermediate jug.

On the jump to the intermediate jug I landed too hard on a volume, and the pull in my calf was there immediately. A misstep or a mild strain, I do not know yet. So it did not happen in the run and jump I avoid, but on one of the two smaller jumps that replace it.

I stopped on the sequence, tested briefly whether I could carry on, and then called it fairly quickly. It is not bad. I feel it when I walk, and a lot when I move the wrong way.

Today was meant to be a tempo run, and that is off. No running until the weekend, strength and mobility in between, then two easy runs at the weekend as a test. Whether my goals still hold, I do not know. The pattern is not new: before races, something has gone wrong while bouldering more than once.

Update, 27 September: I did both test runs, 10 km first, then 22 km. The calf held up. On the 10 there was a slight pressure now and then in tight bends, no pain. On the 22 nothing stood out. That run was only an hour ago, though, so how the calf answers tomorrow I do not know yet. For now the goal stays: 3:45 at the marathon on 11 October. It looks like it fits.

Half marathon in the morning, 6B in the evening

Half marathon in Hamburg in the morning. 1:35:29, a personal best, across the line at 11:35. I was in the gym at 19:30, eight hours later, with no plan beyond having fun with the crew, and I expected nothing from the session at all. That expectation is the only reason I went.

Three problems at 6B/6B+ went, and on three more I now have an idea. We spent a good part of the evening joking about run ups and jumps, which is an odd thing to do on legs that had raced that morning. At the time it did not feel odd in the slightest.

Somewhere in the middle of that, a group I had never met asked for beta on a 6A/6A+ dyno. Nobody had it, mine included, so we took it apart together until it went, each of us contributing a piece. Still inside the good stretch, and the best part of the evening.

The tiredness never showed up in the moves. It showed up as a wall. For seventy, maybe eighty minutes everything felt normal, and then the air was simply gone. Not weaker fingers, not sloppy feet, nothing left to push with.

So I had it backwards. I assumed the legs would be the limit from the first problem onwards, and they were not, right up until they were, all at once. Today they are by far the sorest part of me. Only the friends I came with knew about the race; that, and my last trip to real rock, is what we talked about once the climbing was over.

Harz: my 5C project finally fell

Six of us in the Harz last weekend, which turned out to be half climbing and half pizza. At Langenstein the 5C on the Schiefer Block, Talseite, finally went after ages on it. Titty Twister, the 6A+ over on the Titty Block a little further along, has overlapping links now and still no send, which somehow feels worse than not being close at all. Started a new one after that, Dachhangel, 6A. First three moves are there. The move out to the lip landed once and then never again, which is roughly what being cooked looks like from the inside.

Same day over at Wolfstein, where I spotted more than I climbed. Nothing above a 4, deliberately. Tired and committing do not belong in the same session.

Two things I did not expect. My fingers give up on rock far sooner than on plastic, so the useful part of the day is shorter than the psyche is. And the head never fully switches off on high topouts, even on grades that are objectively easy.

Sunday was rain and the drive home. The part nobody warns you about came later: four rest days on, I was still weaker in the gym than before the trip.