July 24, 2013

Good Day Folks and Folkettes! We are a few weeks into training and things are going well. The tempo is several paces more than the norm. But its good. Sleep has become much more essential (9-10 hours), but we are in a great routine and having tons of fun. Jill has been very busy with work so she can’t devote quite as much time as I do, but I LOVE it. I feel like a sled dog…the more excercise (and food) I get, the better behaved I am. Jilly would agree.

When training for an “outdoor climb” it is important…well…to climb outside. The problem is that every day we plan to do just that, rain, hail, heat, crappy weather, keeps us from doing it. Basically, any time we decide “we’re going climbing today”, the gods of weather decide to rear their ugly heads and say…”No, you aren’t”. I am getting a little ansty to get out there, but at least we have a really nice gym as a substitute.

Every workout is a little different, with varying time and intensities, but we’ve been bouldering hard in the gym, running laps on hard 5.12 routes, biking and yoga (almost daily). I shouldn’t say “we” for all of this, as Jilly only has to go about 5 feet to her office, so biking doesn’t really fill her days, but both of us get to the gym and work our bootay’s off.

Important Considerations For Hard Training

FOOD: We must eat a lot of food and supplement it with recovery drinks after really hard workout days. The trick for me (Jake) is to eat something every hour and a half, and then a large dinner. When you burn over 1000 calories-per-day, every day, its difficult to recoup those calories, while eating super healthy. We are pretty rediculously healthy, we cook all of our meals and use TONS of fresh vegetables and high-quality meat. So, I have to work in some calorie-heavy things like ice cream sammies and beer…but only in moderation. Calories are important, but high-quality calories from healthy foods are ideal.

WORK: I have to mention work too, because while we workout 20+ hours a week, we also have full-time jobs. I (Jake) try not to work more than 40 hours-per-week, and I have flexibility in my work schedule, but the point remains that we are not “pro” athletes. You can use the workday (as we do) for recovery. Your body can refuel and rehydrate and re-grow muscles during the day, leaving you stronger and more amped for your workouts.

SLEEP: A full night of sleep every night (and sometimes naps) is essential to keeping this pace. I need between 9 and 10 hours to feel ready and able to keep going every day. Jilly, however, works much more then 40 hours a week and rarely gets more than 6 hours of sleep per night, so I have no idea how she does it. I guess all of our bodies are different, but in general, the more sleep you can get, the better you will perform.

RECOVERY: Pretty much EVERY time that we aren’t working out is recovery time. Eating and sleeping and (for Jake weekly massages) aid in this and help prevent injury. The most common misconception is that you are making your body stronger with each workout. This is false. What you’re actually doing is breaking down your body with each workout. You rip, tear, stretch, pull (not too extreme) your muscles, ligaments, tendons. It is in the RECOVERY that actually makes you stronger. This is when your body is forced to rebuild itself stronger than before.

I know what you’re thinking… “Yeah, you guys could never do this if you had kids” and you would probably be correct. But actually, we believe (and see) many other parents with children training, climbing, working out much harder than we do. So, we know that it is possible. As with anything in life, its about priorities. You can build your lifestyle and your kids’ lifestyles around the things you deem important.

So, hopefully we can keep working and training hard, getting stronger and stronger, and get on some hard “outdoor” climbs.

Update: We finally managed to climb outside this weekend. Here are some highlights: