Bouldering Pyramid Workout at the MetroRock Climbing Gym

Posted on May 5, 2012 by The Young Urban Unprofessional

The climbing gym is the only place where I’ve ever had a membership. I like rock climbing as exercise because it builds functional strength in ways that is hard to replicate in a traditional gym. There’s no machinery to help you get to the top, it’s only your body and your mind that will help you up (and a decent pair of shoes). Also, it’s an ever-changing workout because routes in the gym change almost monthly, so with dozens of climbs available it’s hard to get bored. In contrast, in a traditional gym, the rowing machine will always be a rowing machine and I tend to lose interest pretty quickly.

On Friday night I headed to MetroRock with my buddy Tony to do a Bouldering workout. For those of you who aren’t familiar with it, here’s a decent definition of Bouldering that I found on a MountainProject.com forum: “Bouldering is climbing without a rope near the ground on boulders or at the base of a cliff. You never climb farther than you are willing to fall. Falls are usually broken by use of a padded “crash” pad. Helps build finger strength, power and footwork.” Bouldering is fun to me because it can have complicated technique and problems (read: climbs) that are short and discrete. I find them to be like a puzzle that you have to use both your mind and your body to solve.

A picture of a V3 having it's way with me :(

Some of my friends are pretty serious climbers so I reached out to them for a typical Bouldering workout that I could in the gym (instead of simply climbing for fun). What I eventually chose was called a pyramid workout where you ramp up to your toughest climb and then go back down again to where you started. Boulding problems are ranked from V0 as the easiest to V16 as the totally unreal/elite bouldering. Considering I’m climbing at a V3 level I built the workout with that as my peak. Inside of 45 minutes I climbed 4 V0′s, 3 V1′s, 2 V2′s, 1 V3, 2 V2′s, 3 V1′s, and 4 V0′s.

The workout lasted about 45 minutes and I climbed 19 boulder problems total, some of them I down-climbed as well instead of simply jumping down from the top. My minimum heart rate was 65, my maximum was 155, and my average was 114. I think the average was fairly low because a large part of gym climbing is actually sitting down and talking about climbing, in reality it’s probably a larger part of climbing than climbing itself. Suffice it to say, I had a great physical workout but a pretty low-key aerobic workout. It certainly worked my forearms, shoulders, back, and core but not so much the lungs over a longer period of time.

I’ll leave you with this sweet home bouldering video. This would be a great way to stay in shape if the only way to get to my computer were to boulder across the house:

Sober Weekend #3: Crappy Pizza Tastes Way Better When You’re Not Sober

Posted on March 26, 2012 by The Young Urban Unprofessional

On Friday after work I met up with two of my buddies for a rock climbing session at MetroRock. After a solid three hours of crushing it we opted for food and beer at RedBones afterward. RedBones is a place where mass quantities of excellent meat (pulled pork sandwiches hmmmm) meets freely flowing beer taps (30oz mugs?!), basically it’s heaven. It was obvious that I wasn’t going to be drinking any beer but the thing that surprised me the most was that I was actually jonesing for a veggie burger. The me from 6-months-ago NEVER would have ordered a veggie burger (let’s put it in a time frame: EVER), let alone a veggie burger at a BBQ joint like RedBones, it’s borderline sacrilegious. Nonetheless that’s what I ordered, it also helped that one member of our trio was a vegetarian. I figured I’d also try out one of their non-alcoholic beers because I’ve never actually had one. As long as I was on this sober month I might as well give it a try.

Turns out O'Douls is pretty nasty, it's like a crappy rendition of PBR, something I'm sure not even hipsters would tolerate. Thanks to Ryan for rubbing it in in the background :)

The next day Sarah got back from a trip to New Orleans and she had bought me a flask. I’ve wanted one for a while so it was an excellent gift, although an excellent gift that will have to wait until April 1st at 12:01am.

Then Saturday night my friends were having a Ke$ha-themed party for our friend’s bday. It mostly involved a lot of glitter, which I’m still trying to get out of my hair. The plan was for everyone to party at our friend’s apartment and then to hit up Phoenix Landing, a bar meant for sweaty dancing and 80s/90s/top 40 songs. I was kind of excited to go experience the glory that is Phoenix Landing as a sober person because I’m sure very few people have witnessed it sober. When we got to the bar the line was outrageously long so we made peace with the fact it’d take an hour to get inside so we decided to go back to my friends apartment and resume the party with beer pong and more Ke$ha.

Sober beer pong, not sure I've ever done that before this weekend...

Maybe it was just me being sober, but drinking out of the cups seemed pretty gross after watching a half dozen dozen people slobber all over them. I’ve never really cared much to think about it but I’m sure it’s a great way to get mono. I prefer having my own side beer and filling the cups with water anyway. For this game I stuck to my tasty, yet sans alcohol, fruit drink.

We ended up losing the game, I'm sure my skills were off because I was sober, all my training throughout college was under the influence so I'm not surprised we got smoked by our opponents.

On the way back to the T going home, we stopped by a great late-night pizza place because we had the munchies. It was then that I learned that drunk food definitely tastes better when you’re drunk.

Late night pizza tastes WAY better when you're not sober. Definitely gross, definitely ate it anyway, #SorryImNotSorry

I rounded out the weekend with some live blues at the Beehive in the South End. The event is free but generally involves food and beer as an expectation for attending the event. We stood around watching the show for about an hour before finally getting a table but it was totally worth it because we were front row, pretty excellent.

Front row for blues at the Beehive.

The waiter came by and asked us what we would like for beer or cocktails and we all ordered waters. I definitely felt weird about not ordering a drink and we definitely got a hesitant weird look from the waiter in return. A bourbon on the rocks seemed much more appropriate for blues music but water would have to suffice for tonight. It was interesting to be at the Beehive and not be drinking. It’s such a cultural norm to drink during entertainment and it felt a bit bizarre to simply ask for water. I felt fine about it because I also ordered their poutine which was fantastic. It was no Dysarts poutine but it was good nonetheless.

Monday October 24th – Climbing at MetroRock and the MassChallenge After Party

Posted on October 25, 2011 by The Young Urban Unprofessional

Tonight was probably one of my best 5-9 experiences throughout this month. I headed to MetroRock to do some climbing after work which by itself was awesome. Then on my way home I got a call from Sarah who was at the MassChallenge awards ceremony and on her way to the after-party at the MassChallenge headquarters in the Seaport, or more recently known as the Boston Innovation District. Luckily I still had my work clothes with me, so I changed out of my climbing gear while on the Silver Line bus (sketchy but I was the only person on the bus so oh well). Then we celebrated with a bunch of entrepreneurs via open bar, matches of pool, lots of cake, and dancing. Entrepreneurs definitely know how to party that’s for sure. We had a blast hanging out with so many high powered innovators. Plus we met some quebecois folks and spent some time chatting with them en francais. What an unexpected turn of events for a Monday evening. I wish all Monday evenings were this much fun.

Chilling out waiting for the train after work, heading out to the climbing gym.

Reading Dracula... across the isle from Dracula?

Heading out to Wellington to climb at MetroRock.

Sent a V3 in the cave, felt pretty good about myself, it was probably a soft V3 anyway though :)

I was at the gym for a few hours but my phone alarm only went off once. Then it went off again while I was entering the Wellington T Station on my way home, a largely uninteresting point in my night. HOWEVER, here I got the call from Sarah to come join her at the MassChallenge after party, bonus!

Taking a really roundabout way to get to the Seaport where MassChallenge is. Totally worth it though for the free Harpoon beer. MC really knows how to throw down for its entrepreneurs.

The view of Boston from outside MassChallenge which is technical located in what is now called "The Boston Innovation District".

Sarah and I partying it up on a Monday night with a bunch of entrepreneurs. Tonight MassChallenge gave out $1Million in cash to the top companies from their startup competition so the atmosphere there was incredible.

Enjoying some MassChallenge cake. They had 125 companies go through a 3 month incubator at their headquarters in the Innovation District and the top 10 companies split $1Million. Awesome.

Pretty decent view of the financial district of Boston from a conference room at MassChallenge. Not a bad place to work, I could probably put up with this view.

Being in the presence of so many startups tonight was invigorating. If only I could somehow harness the excitement and bring it with me to my 9-5 job. Tomorrow I’m at a workshop all day which should be largely uninteresting except for the fact I’m giving a presentation in front of 20 people who make roughly double my salary. My talk is about some research I’ve done that says how we should get rid of all of them and flatten the hierarchy so we can more effectively do our jobs. We’ll see if I can do it tactfully or else I might be out of a job :)

Thursday October 13th – Happiness and Climbing

Posted on October 15, 2011 by The Young Urban Unprofessional

Today I headed to the climbing gym after work to climb with Sarah. I got a few pictures from the gym but missed four alarms while I was climbing so there’s only 6 pictures on this post. I was initially bummed that I had missed the chance to document my experience but realized that it was probably better that I was focused on my climbing and the safety of my partner. So missing a few pictures was no big deal. I spent some of the time reviewing various knots, it’s been a while since I’ve done anything but sport climbing in a gym and I wanted to make sure I was still on my game. Plus, I plan to do a decent amount of ice climbing this winter so I want to make sure I’m ready.

Doing some light reading on the train. Here's a picture of a Figure Eight Bend, you use it to attach the ends of two ropes together.

Got home from work, threw my climbing stuff and some grub in my backpack and took off for the gym. I bought a monthly membership through Groupon for super cheap so I'm pumped to use it a lot this month.

To get the gym sans car you take the Orange line to Wellington and then call Metrorock and they'll come pick you up and bring you to the gym. It's less than a mile from the train station so it's pretty quick and a lot of people use the service.

This is an example of what happiness looks like. It involves dried fruit, Dysarts apparel, and bouldering. However, I think I spent too much time bouldering because I was uber burnt out when we decided to top-rope.

Doing some abs up on the mezzanine above the bouldering area because my hands/forearms were shot from climbing for a few hours.

All sweaty from the gym and playing Sarah's guitar. It sounds FANTASTIC. Now I just need to bring my own guitar over so we can jam sometime.

Climbing at the gym tonight made it painfully obvious how much stamina you lose in the sport of climbing when you take even a month or two off. Before October it had been probably 3 months since I had been climbing. I’ve spent most of this summer hiking and picking off various 4,000 footers with the goal of finishing them by my 25th birthday. As a result my quads, hamstrings, and cardio are really strong but my rock climbing technique and stamina totally blows. I assume that by the end of the month I’ll be back to climbing at my previous level.