Getting Physical

It's three days since my second climbing lesson, on which we spent about two hours on the actual climbing floor, as opposed to about an hour the previous week. My forearms and shoulders are still aching, the palms of my hands are sore and I can feel that the tendons of my groin are stretched. It feels great.

There's a great physical contrast between cycling and climbing as sports. Climbing seems to take place in exhausting five-minute bursts whereas cycling can be hours of steady effort. On a push-bike the range of movements is constrained; even on a singlespeed where I stand on the pedals and heave on the bars a lot, there's still not a great range of movement. Climbing has lots of stretching, a great range of movement and is absolute hell on the fingers and forearms. Road cycling in particular allows my arms to atrophy to nothingness which is why I enjoy being in the woods on the singlespeed, heaving away and making my shoulders work as well as my legs.

So it looks as if I need to do both to regain the svelte figure of my youth and stay relatively fit for an oldie. Besides which, I will have the chance to acquire yet another collection of boys' toys sports equipment. Hooray.

:o)