Day 51 - Quart in a Pint Pot

this and that

Right, there's absolutely no reason for me to be banging on about this, but apparently I'm going to anyway...live with it!

You remember that Kooga top I was telling you about?  The speed skating thing from a couple of days back?

I wore it when we went climbing (indoors) on Saturday.  We found we were really tired, which somehow led to us choosing to spend our time bouldering, rather than top-roping.

Bouldering (short, very hard climbing problems, with no ropes) is very strenuous, whereas top-roping is much easier, if requiring a little more endurance.  It's not clear how we came to our apparently contradictory decision...I think it might have been as simple as finding we couldn't be arsed to put our harnesses on.

Consequently, we struggled through the whole session.    Anna nearly passed out a couple of times, as she is prone to when exerting herself too much, and I soon found myself uncomfortably hot.

At 6'3" and 14st, give or take a couple of pounds, steeper than vertical climbing (when the wall is essentially overhanging to any degree) is very hard work for me.   In this style of climbing, much of your weight is hanging off your hands, rather than resting more comfortably over your feet.

This becomes very tiring very quickly...especially when you are a) relatively heavy, b) getting a little long in the tooth for this sort of thing, and c) somewhat inept...

So that'll be me, then...

Despite the fact that it was a chilly day (and it's always freezing in the climbing gym), I soon realised I had too many layers on. 

Unfortunately the Kooga top was my bottom layer, and I really needed to take it off, as my temperature was still rising rapidly, or so it felt. 

So I had to risk the ignominy, and spend a couple of hot, sweaty, desperate minutes trying to peel the damn thing over my head, whilst hiding at one end of the bouldering area and hoping nobody wandered up there. 

I should say, I really do like the top, but it probably works better outdoors!

In the photo above, the black bootlace is 32" in circumference, which is the size of the body of the Kooga top.   It has a couple of inches of stretch, but not lots - it is designed to compress and support your muscles.   My waist is a little larger than that...cough

My chest is around 43" at the moment (it varies between 42" and 44", depending on how much resistance exercise I've done in the recent past.  This is a bit of a squeeze in the top...although there's a little extra, finer material under the arms, making it more stretchy at this point. 

However, my shoulders are 52" in circumference - the size of the beige cotton ribbon in the photo.

Yep, I have to get my this size shoulders through a that size opening...now perhaps you can begin to understand the struggle I'm having.

Still, Anna finds it endlessly amusing, and just sits giggling unhelpfully as I squirm and contort my shoulders...

So there's that, at least. 

Ho hum.