Sparkpeople update
Rain is good, wonderful in fact. In recent years, we never get enough. The SF Bay area is one of only five places in the world where there is a Mediterranean climate, which has a very specific definition. It only rains when it is cool (or downright cold, but very rarely snows or freezes) and it does not rain at all in the summer. Really, not a drop.
So now we are getting a lot of rain, but not enough to call “normal” for this year yet. The rain “year” is like the school year, it starts in the fall when the rain starts, not in January. Rainfall varies a lot in a short distance depending on whether you are in the flat part of Silicon (aka Santa Clara) Valley or on the ocean side of the Santa Cruz mountains. San Jose is mostly in the flats: 15″ a year. Santa Cruz: 30″. Normal for Los Gatos, just over the hill from Santa Cruz, is about 25″ and even a normal year will not wipe out the drought that has been creeping up on us, but it is raining and every drop helps.
But it sure does make exercising more inconvenient! Unless you go skiing, which is fun but expensive. This week I actually went walking the hills in pouring down rain. My raincoat actually started to soak through. Obviously I need to rediscover some more indoor exercises if I’m going to keep up my almost-daily exercise. The graph does not lie, I’ve been slipping! I only have two days left this week, so the best I can do is 6x, which would be pretty good especially if I manage to climb again or — during a break in the weather — bike?!
The week that I exercised only 4 times is the first week that it rained non-stop and the reason for the apparent extra exercise that week is 2.5 days of downhill skiing, which is quite a workout when you are trying to keep up with your kids. Oh sure, I can do that black diamond, since the snow is light and fluffy. We had a great time and some of the time sent the kids off on their own so we could ski at a more adult (slower!) pace without making them wait for us.
For exercise yesterday I climbed with Mike and our friend Jordan. They talked me into attempting my first 5.10a climb ever, something I had no real plans to ever attempt, and I did it! This was at Planet Granite in Sunnyvale. They gave me beta all the way up, including: “Stop right there – that looks like a really good place to rest. Don’t you want to rest? You should rest. Just stay there and rest a minute…” I did pause and rest, but not too long because it was a balancy sort of rest stop that you could not really rest in 100% like you can in some places. If I “rested” there too long, I’d go past the point of recovery and start getting tired again just standing there. So after a short rest I continued, and amazingly finished. I did not know I was going to finish until I was within the last few moves and only then did I determine to definitely finish. It was fun, and the best thing is: now I feel like I should be able to do all the 5.9′s. I normally can do almost all 5.8′s, and about half the 5.9′s. And I’m excited about taking an actual lesson, too, so I can learn from a pro instead of just from experience.
Just checking that the plugin I just activated did not break comments.