Bone Pain

I'm sore all the time these days.  Oh, it's for a good reason- getting stronger requires the tearing of muscles, after all, and tearing, generally, is a Painful Thing.  But I can't help but think I'd be slightly less sore if I was getting my full allotment of sleep.  Which I am not.  Because of (you guessed it) the puppy.

But girl, she'll be a dog soon, and then this up-to-let-her-out-at-four-in-the-morning nonsense will be behind us, and I can once again indulge in a full eight hours of fully restorative sleep.

Anyway.

This is the week I've finally managed to actually implement "going to the rock gym twice a week" policy- well, that is to say, I went today, which is Tuesday, and normally my Climbing Day is Thursday.  So I guess it would be more accurate to say I've laid the foundation for going twice this week.

I go to the gym alone, and avail myself of the auto-belay.  Sometimes I manage to sucker in a fellow solo-climber and then we have a belay partner and can get a break from the same damn routes (although my new thing is to climb an easy-ish route up, and then climb it back down.  Woo, endurance!).  Today was half-and-half.  I climbed alone for a while, then tried to strike up a belay partner, but he demurred (and after listening to him talk for about ten minutes I wasn't exactly disappointed).  So I climbed a bit more, then found another girl and chatted her up- and she was game.  And a better climber than me, too, which I always enjoy belaying for, because I learn things while watching them.

Normally I have a full week to recover from one climbing session to the next, and feel fresh as a daisy.  Today, however, I'd had five days- and, as you may remember, had learned to climb a rope just three days prior.  Gentle Readers, I felt it.  My arms essentially quit on me after an hour.  I was maybe four feet from the top of a route, but it was an overhang and I literally could not pull myself up any higher.  I was super grateful that I had a real human belaying for me at that point... I don't mind the free-fall that is consciously releasing myself to the auto-belay, but to just plain fall is exceptionally unpleasant.

Anyway my forearms ache now, deep down in the bones.

But I can't say that I really mind.

Here is a vampire that has nothing to do with anything, and whom I am  now thinking looks disturbingly like one of my ex boyfriends...