My new sport?

So, after many years (yes... I'm a little slow and thick sometimes...) of my wife "suggesting" that I take up a regular sport... I might have finally found something that I like doing! My wife is convinced that if I don't do regular excercise now... then when I'm older, I will have dementia and she will be the active and mobile one of the two of us... and that she would need to look after my decrepit brain-blasted mind.... actually, I'm not really sure that that is a bad thing for me!

Anyway... she did get me with the dementia sort of thing... I like to think and read and learn... and so the thought of that becoming more difficult was enough to get me to start looking for something to do.

Now, in The Netherlands, we do do (he he...) a fair bit of walking and a pretty gratuitous amount of cycling as well. However, as I've gotten older... I'm less keen to be cycling and walking whilst someone is just pouring buckets of cold rain on your head. Sure, when you are younger... it doesn't matter so much... but there are only so many times that you want to show up with your pants and shoes completely drenched through... plus, now that I'm losing a bit of my hair, when my hair is wet it starts to look like I'm that creepy guy from the movie Con Air.

Now... in the past, swimming has been my go-to sport (well, when I was younger it was soccer and archery... but soccer here is pretty intense... and apparently archery doesn't count as a "real" sport according to my wife... however, it will be hyper useful when the zombie apocalypse hits us...). The thing about running and swimming (running I'm terrible at, swimming I'm okay at...) is that I just get bored... plus, the Dutch seem to have much laxer rules about what constitutes lane swimming... like the actual use of the lanes and directions... so, at times it can be more like a fight for survival... or a game of chicken (I'm small, so I swerve first!).

However, a month ago... I talked to a soprano who had taken up rock-climbing as her sport... and she was telling me about how she was going to take an adventure holiday climbing frozen waterfalls in Italy!... okay, I guess there are more interesting ways to plan your death... I prefer in my sleep in a warm bed... rather than frozen, sore and with about 10 long seconds to think about how much the ground is going to hurt when it hits you.

Anyway, she suggested that I might be interested in boudering... seeing as I would often love clambering and running along rocks in nature when I was younger. She said that it was pretty much the same thing... just minus the slippery water parts and the treacherous moss and that stable looking rock that turned out to be anything but....

Last week, my oldest child had a studiedag at school (the teachers are there for training or admin work... but no students). These days are the best, as they are not co-ordinated between schools... thus, it is the best time to go and visit galleries, museums, cinemas and other stuff... as there are no crowds of kids! I took my kid boudering! It was her first time, and she LOVED it!... she was pretty decent at it for her first go... although there were some of the higher ones where she freaked out a little and had to come back down... also the ones where she was more tilted backwards were a bit scary at first!

I really wanted to have a go... but I had to watch the toddler... but I thought... hmmm, I'm definitely coming back when I next have a free day!

... and this week, I managed to find an hour to come back and try! I have to say, it is pretty great! It's like a huge physical puzzle.... So, in the above picture... you see the various gradings of the paths that you can take... I started with red... but I found it too easy... so, after half an hour on those to warm up with.. I moved to blue...

... oh man, most of those I could do with a bit of balance and effort... it's really nice to have to figure out how to shift weight and balance to reach the next hand or foot hold! However, there was one path that kept defeating me! I would make it one stage from the top... but I couldn't get two hands on the last part (you need two hands for a couple of seconds to count it as complete). I could get one, but I couldn't make the last hand...

One of the instructors came and gave me some advice... and pointed out that I could use the gray protrusions and neutral (gray) rocks as well!... .PFFFFDFDFE!!!!!! I had been doing all the Blue routes WITHOUT those!.... no wonder some of them were pretty damn tricky! She also showed me how to do the path...

So, with this new knowledge in hand... (and after a coffee...)... I had another crack at it... and what do you know? The instructors obviously have some pretty decent skill and experience... and like any other master, they make things look pretty damn easy! I got to the same place at the top... tried to do what they did (pivot and turn around to grasp the last hand hold whilst keeping myself precariously balanced with a great deal of tension on some small and inclined stones...)... and ended up falling the 3 or 4 metres back to the ground!

LOL! After trying one more time... I figured that this was going to be something that I would have to try for next time! It is the last of the blues... so, I really wanted to complete this set.... but I didn't think it was going to happen this time!

This bouldering gives you a pretty heft workout on the arms and hands... a bit less so for the legs (for me at the moment... I think the ones where you are pretty much hanging upside down on your back might be different!)... yesterday I felt pretty okay... today, I'm sore as hell! Unfortunately, I have a rehearsal this evening... so, I hope most of the soreness passes... or I will be one very slow slow violinist.... but I'm sure everyone will have a good laugh at me... seeing as I'm usefully okay with fast stuff... I think it will be hilarious for other people to see me hobbled!

I think this could be my sport though! I love the challenge of figuring out how to progress through the path... after my first go, I think I'm hooked... I will have to time the exercise a bit better next time though... and perhaps give myself a day or two to recover some agility and strength in my hands... it's not quite so compatible with violin at the moment.. perhaps more so when I get better at it!

... as a bonus, my oldest daughter also loved it! She wants to go back and do things together... next time without her sister... so that we can just have some father and daughter time together just climbing coloured rocks on the walls!