In which Rachel falls down, goes boom
One of my students, Alena, is a rock climber. She's traveled all over Czech, and even to a few other countries, to climb in the wilderness. She even competes! She says that guys have a strength and height advantage, but girls are better at figuring out routes. :D She's so much cooler than me. I talked to her more this week, and she told me that it's actually pretty cheap to go to a training center and muck around for a couple hours ($4). She does bouldering, which is climbing without ropes/equipment. Usually the walls are shorter and angled than a regular climbing wall. This sounded a lot more fun to me than a regular climbing wall, and god knows it's good for upper body strength which I always need more of, so I looked at the website. http://www.boulder.cz There're loads of pics all over the website, especially under Boulder Bar and Activity>Competition. My god those climbers have the perfect bodies. Rowr.
Anyways, I drafted Wade, Alicia, Melissa, and Jamie into coming along with me to check it out tonight. I think this was our first group outing that wasn't in someone's apartment or to a pub/restaurant/club. It was really fun! We didn't last too long, because we're all weak and scrawny. Mel was the first to reach the top, and everyone eventually reached the ceiling except for me. I uh, reached the ceiling in the little kid's room...I love the kid's room. :D The handholds are things like hearts and elephants and it's really easy, but good practice cause you can go sideways and worry less about falling. Once Wade realized there were holds on the ceiling he liked the kid's room too.
I was doing pretty well on one of the walls, I started using a foothold on the bottom (it was a jutting wall so it was kinda like a ceiling, but a foot off the ground) and eventually moved up the wall and then over to the perpendicular wall and further up, but then I fell. We all fell a lot, which is fine, it's easier to jump down than climb down and the mats are cushy. But something went wrong on this fall and I ended up face-planting. My feet hit first and then I don't know what the hell happened but I literally fell on my face.
(how many nerdy possessions can you see in this pic?)
I'm pretty pissed off at myself for it. Not because it hurts, because I barely feel it. I actually did pretty well on the injuries, the twins both hurt their ankles but other than this and a few sore spots/scrapes I'm fine. Not because it looks bad (though it's actually a lot redder than it looks in the pic), because I can cover it with my bangs. I'm tempted not to, it'll fill some conversation time with my students. :D And I was joking that I'd tell people that Wade was abusing me, and he's like go for it. He's leaving for the US for a couple of weeks, so we could mess with everyone and see how many glares he gets upon his return. We think Kristine could beat him up, but he could outrun her.
I'm annoyed because I shouldn't have fallen on my face at all. I was never very good at falling and I'm (obviously) out of practice, but still. I knew I was falling, I knew I should fall backwards, there's absolutely no excuse for my face touching the ground. Stacy knows what I'm talking about. That's Robin on my desktop in the background. He's pretty disgusted with me right now.
Edit: I talked to Alicia and Mel, they did an impression of my fall and it looks like my arms were right. Unsure what went wrong, but at least I didn't completely fuck up. :P
So after that I admit I got a little wussier and didn't even try to reach the ceiling. Shame on me. But I am planning on going back once a week, it's a really great forearm/hand workout. Works everything really, but this is the first time my finger muscles have hurt after any kind of training, which is pretty exciting. I also like how body-conscious you have to be while also planning the next move. There was a good climber in there while we were winding down, I loved watching him. I have no illusions of ever being really good, but it's fun and useful so no matter. And it's always good to do things that scare you a little. Hopefully Wade and Alicia/Mel will join me sometimes. :)
Anyways, I drafted Wade, Alicia, Melissa, and Jamie into coming along with me to check it out tonight. I think this was our first group outing that wasn't in someone's apartment or to a pub/restaurant/club. It was really fun! We didn't last too long, because we're all weak and scrawny. Mel was the first to reach the top, and everyone eventually reached the ceiling except for me. I uh, reached the ceiling in the little kid's room...I love the kid's room. :D The handholds are things like hearts and elephants and it's really easy, but good practice cause you can go sideways and worry less about falling. Once Wade realized there were holds on the ceiling he liked the kid's room too.
I was doing pretty well on one of the walls, I started using a foothold on the bottom (it was a jutting wall so it was kinda like a ceiling, but a foot off the ground) and eventually moved up the wall and then over to the perpendicular wall and further up, but then I fell. We all fell a lot, which is fine, it's easier to jump down than climb down and the mats are cushy. But something went wrong on this fall and I ended up face-planting. My feet hit first and then I don't know what the hell happened but I literally fell on my face.
(how many nerdy possessions can you see in this pic?)
I'm pretty pissed off at myself for it. Not because it hurts, because I barely feel it. I actually did pretty well on the injuries, the twins both hurt their ankles but other than this and a few sore spots/scrapes I'm fine. Not because it looks bad (though it's actually a lot redder than it looks in the pic), because I can cover it with my bangs. I'm tempted not to, it'll fill some conversation time with my students. :D And I was joking that I'd tell people that Wade was abusing me, and he's like go for it. He's leaving for the US for a couple of weeks, so we could mess with everyone and see how many glares he gets upon his return. We think Kristine could beat him up, but he could outrun her.
I'm annoyed because I shouldn't have fallen on my face at all. I was never very good at falling and I'm (obviously) out of practice, but still. I knew I was falling, I knew I should fall backwards, there's absolutely no excuse for my face touching the ground. Stacy knows what I'm talking about. That's Robin on my desktop in the background. He's pretty disgusted with me right now.
Edit: I talked to Alicia and Mel, they did an impression of my fall and it looks like my arms were right. Unsure what went wrong, but at least I didn't completely fuck up. :P
So after that I admit I got a little wussier and didn't even try to reach the ceiling. Shame on me. But I am planning on going back once a week, it's a really great forearm/hand workout. Works everything really, but this is the first time my finger muscles have hurt after any kind of training, which is pretty exciting. I also like how body-conscious you have to be while also planning the next move. There was a good climber in there while we were winding down, I loved watching him. I have no illusions of ever being really good, but it's fun and useful so no matter. And it's always good to do things that scare you a little. Hopefully Wade and Alicia/Mel will join me sometimes. :)