A Transition Towards a Training Blog

I guess that I’ve been neglecting my blog lately; nothing terribly interesting to say! I haven’t really been training since the Ontario Cup race at Kelso; I’ve just been keeping active in my cycling community! This week I got back on board with my training plan, and am so stoked for next season. I’m coached by Eric Batty at Mountain Addict Athletics and am super stoked. He’s got me doing a huge variety of stuff, 

everything from hiking to rock climbing, biking to skiing, and don’t forget the rest days.

One off season ambition of mine is to improve my rock climbing abilities and get into a couple of competitions. I have started training with my good friend David; he’s the co-president of the rock climbing club here at the University of Guelph, and is getting a “team” together for the very first inter-university climbing competition. It is my ambition to be on that team, and kick ass! It’s going to take a lot of work.

The workouts are pretty intense, we start up with traversing the gym

Here it is:

Start with traversing the gym – this means that you climb your way around the whole gym, not going more than 8 feet above the floor.

Next a rotation of five exercises;

leg raises on the chinup bar until you can touch your feet to your hands

chin-ups on what are essentially two wooden balls hanging from the ceiling

plank

standing in the same spot on an inclined wall (inclined overhead) and you have to change your hands to different (very slim) holds 40 times

push ups

Quick break then we went on the wall for 15 minutes all at once climbing around the “new gym”. If you fall off it’s 20 situps and then back on the wall. This is an excellent endurance test, and it’s funny when people have to climb over eachother in the process.

The last planned workout was one where our hands were banded by elastic with a partner, and we had to climb the wall like that. This works out one arm a lot more than the other (the non banded arm), makes you work on finesse, and go slowly. Trust and teamwork are also essential. I was working Jen, and climbing is a great thing because men and women seem to be pretty equally good at it due to the finesse involved (she's way better and stronger than me though!).

This girl kicks ass, I'd be lucky to climb as well as she does!

I wrapped up the workout with minuters, climbing up and down the wall as many times as you can in a minute, then doing a minute plank, and repeating the process three times.

These workouts are happening every Tuesday at 10:00am, and anyone in the climbing club is welcome! If you don’t know about the climbing club it’s in the bottom of the athletic centre, where it occupies two fortified squash court rooms, and the small training room. Membership is $50 for the year of $30 for the semester, and your first visit is free. It’s a friendly great bunch of people and a nice atmosphere all of the time down there, open from 1:30 to 10:00pm. Happy climbing!