I went to Vitam to climb on Thursday and I went to Rocspot to climb on Thursday. I climbed twice this week because the Wednesday session went so well. The reason for which it went so well is that I am climbing regularly again. I climb at least once to twice per week, which is nothing by some standards but better than in the last two years.
We started on Wednesday by climbing top roped routes to warm up. In the process I decided to take harder routes. I climbed up routes that were graded from 6a to 6c. The beauty of climbing top roped is that you can familiarise yourself with more challenging routes and experiment without a fall being as bad.
If I was lead climbing the route then I often feel the need to be certain that I can make the holds up to the point where I can make the next clip. With top rope I can try and fail without consequences. During this climbing session, I tried and failed several times on the 6c.
Trying and failing is a sign of progress. It shows that my fear of falling is diminishing and that my desire to summit, and my desire to succeed is increasing.
There is the added pressure that whereas in the Lausanne climbing group I was in the middle of the group in terms of ability in this group I am the more experienced climber so if I can lead climb routes I can leave behind the rope for them to top rope and practice. All of us are learning and by pushing the envelope of our abilities we progress.
Making such progress in February is great because Spring and summer lie ahead. Spring, Summer, and even Autumn climbing seasons are fun. Summer is all about the rock climbing, the via ferrata, hiking and cycling. By getting a good level indoors as winter comes to an end we are primed to have fun outdoors.
Yesterday I took over 16,000 steps. Some of those steps were during a short run from Eysins to Nyon and the rest were during the walk around Nyon and back to Eysins. By the end of the day I had manage to accumulate the step goal of 15300 steps.
With Fitbit and other activity trackers this would be fantastic because you would have met your step goal and you could look forward to meeting the same daily goal day after day. Garmin Connect is different. If you reach and exceed the goal on one day the goal is boosted the next day, and the day after that.
Last Tuesday the step goal was 10950 steps. Yesterday it was 15,300 and today 15,510 steps. That’s an increase of 5000 steps in a week. The issue I face is not with getting to that step count but rather with the amount of time it takes and the fact that cycling and workout intensity are not considered.
I went for two ten minute runs with a three minute break in between today and when I got home I had no spring in my step and I just wanted to rest. I am still getting back into the habit of running so it takes its toll.
I love that it encourages me to take those extra 200 steps compared to yesterday and I love that in theory I could get to the point where the step count requires me to walk for 24 hours to reach it. In practice I want to do other things as well.
In the past I have taken up to 40,000 steps a day on more than one occasion and regularly reached over 20,000. After a hiking weekend the figure will be high, but you’ll be stuck in the office with your daily commute and lunch hour to make up the difference.
The other option is to run. I walk at up to 110 steps per minute but run at around 140 consistently. If I run for as long as I walk I would reach the goal in less time.
When you miss a step goal the counter degrades the required number of steps for the next day. The emotional cost is that you lose the streak. In practice I will lose the streak every Wednesday, as I save energy to go climbing so it doesn’t matter.
Physically I find getting to ten thousand steps really easy. It doesn’t tire me. The challenge when using fitbit was getting to that step count for two or three months in a row. If you’re driving for twelve hours or if you go on a bike ride you miss the goal and you’re stuck with the prospect of going for that many days+1 to beat your old goal. The better you are at reaching your goal the harder it is to beat it.
The easy option would be to edit the daily goal to a fixed number. I could set it to the standard 10,000 steps and beat it daily or conversely I could do the opposite.
The opposite would be to look at the graph above and to select a daily step goal that puts me above 95 percent of other users. According to this chart if I consistently reached 15,000 steps I would beat almost everyone on the graph. I could be more, rather than less ambitious.
The summer hiking, climbing and Via Ferrata seasons are about to start and already I am in the top eight percent for floors climbed per day. 92 percent of Garmin activity tracker users climb less than 21 floors a day. On a good hiking day I climb the equivalent of over 400. I look forward to seeing the stats over the summer months.
In the last two or three days as I tracked my activities I noticed this anomaly. When I checked the GPX file it seems that Garmin tracks activities automatically and when you’re outdoors it knows where you are. When you go indoors or the signal is lost it auto-corrects the location to a cell tower that it can sense.
The tracker is intelligent enough to detect where we are and what we’re doing but when the GPS signal it auto-corrects to a location kilometres away. This is a flaw. If a GPS signal loses location information it should persist at the last known location until it has a solid fix. If I have such a big fluctuation in a location I usually delete the track. It is worthless.
I would like Garmin to take the data from thousands of fitness trackers and create a formula that automatically degrades or increases step count according to weather, number of hours of daylight and other factors. Imagine if instead of “if user “a*” beats previous day then increase by 200″ it updated or decreased according to whether someone cycled, ran or regularly went climbing. As things are I will never have a seven day streak.
During a recent walk I noticed that I could hear birds chirping, that the sun was shining and that spring seemed to be booting up. The weather held until Saturday so the conditions were ideal for a nice bike ride. The ride started at around 0840, with frost on the ground and an Outdoor Air Temperature (OAT) of around 1°c.
Usually I ride alone but for once I met with a Strava user and we rode at his pace rather than mine. This is a rare luxury. Usually I push myself for the duration of the ride. I try to ride at threshold for as much of the ride as possible. This ride was at a more leisurely pace.
We rode up from Nyon to Luins and from Luins through the vineyards towards Aubonne towards Apples, Bière and then back down towards Echandens. This involved riding through Springtime vineyards. Below us the U-shaped glacial trough was blanketed in mist, as you can see from the two images.
Shortly after taking this picture we had a short, hard climb. The gradient for the climb goes up to 24 percent. This climb requires strength to get up. I had already encountered this climb but from the other side, heading downwards. At the time I thought that I would never want to do this climb in the opposite direction.
As if this wasn’t hard enough it peaks at 28 percent.
This is the type of climb where you have to be used to clipped pedals. If you run out of steam and need to stop you have milliseconds before you stop and fall over. I rode near the wall so that if I ran out of steam I could rest against the wall. It is a character building climb.
Luckily after this climb it gets easier again.
We continued towards Pampigny and from Pampigny headed down for Morges. It amused me that we passed by rocspot. Rocspot is an indoor and outdoor climbing gym where people can climb year round. It is one of the best climbing gyms of the region.
The route from Morges to Nyon along the lake is relatively flat and more relaxing. There was no wind during the entire ride and the temperature was low enough not to need to rehydrate constantly. I drank just half a bottle. In summer I would have emptied two of them.
If you have several hours to spend on a bike ride then this is a nice ride. For the most part it is a moderate ride with gradual gradients, little traffic until you get back to the lake side, and nice landscapes. There are a number of places where you could stop for a drink or a snack and it gets you within easy reach of Lausanne, should you want to interrupt the ride, and take the train home. It is a nice warm-up for those thinking of doing the nearby cols. I will do this ride again.
When you’re hiking, cycling, climbing or doing other sporting activities it is easy to forget to stop tracking an activity. When you’re at home or static this is less critical. When you get into a car after a hike or other activity that mistake will screw up your average speed and other data.
Yesterday I realised that I had forgotten to stop tracking on my Suunto device and on my apple watch. With the Apple watch this was less important because it logs individual climbs. With the Suunto device however it tracks the speed of the drive as well as the increase and decrease in altitude.
Strava has two options to fix this mistake. Split is good for running and cycling activities. It allows you to split and then delete what you do not want to keep. Crop allows you to select the in point and the outpoint of an activity like you would if you were editing video.
In the image above you can see the track from the climbing gym towards the motorway. Initially I adjusted the sliders simply to remove that segment but noticed that there is a more precise tool.
With the climbing profile view you can see each climb as well as the difference in altitude as you drive from the car park to the motorway. I deleted the superfluous data and pressed “crop”. I then had a clean export of my activity.
This is a quick, intuitive and useful feature to know about. It allows you to keep a more accurate record of previous activities and a more reasonable track of distance covered over the last week, month or year. Some day I might go back and clean up previous activities.
I have had a meetup.com account since I was using yahoo as my primary e-mail provider. For years my account was dormant because activities that I were interested in were either in another country or at a time when I could not participate. Recently I have found that activities are at times when I can participate. As a result of this I am building a new network of people to climb with.
At the same time as my meetup habit is picking up my FaceBook is declining. I am now into my fifth day without using the social network. I stopped using FaceBook and Instagram because whereas they used to be networks to keep in touch with friends they are now networks to enrich influencers and leaving us feeling empty. Add to this the genocide, the monopoly and other issues and you see why we decrease the habit.
Social networks should first and foremost be about connecting people and enabling them to enrich their lives by both meeting new people and by practicing the activities that they enjoy. Social networks should empower people to find people with whom to have adventures and a social life. Social networks should contribute towards an active existence.
Twitter and Seesmic were two social networks that encouraged people to converse, and have such a great time in the virtual world that they wanted to meet in person. Facebook in contrast has always been about adding old friends, and occasionally joking around but for the most part keeping in touch with old friends. Since Zynga took over timelines keeping in touch was redundant as it would take reading dozens of posts before you came to one you could engage with personally.
In using Meetup.com for several weeks I have met new people, started climbing again and I have come home feeling fulfilled. This is especially true for last Wednesday and this Sunday. When I do group activities sports are not my motivation. Socialising is. I want to meet new people and I want to converse. I am an active participant rather than an observational introvert. Groups that are inclusive of introverts are worth being part of.
In summary we use social networks because we want to diminish solitude Networks that allow us to connect with people on a personal level are to be prioritised. Those that leave us feeling disconnected should be unplugged.
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