Rock climbing membership

 Miya and I are getting into the rock climbing.

We decided to both get memberships at Northern Rocks, like I wrote about last time, and we both got new climbing shoes.

We've planned out our weekly timetable, and the two of us aim to go there three times a week (midday-ish Mondays, Thursdays and Fridays) for an hour or so each time.

Last Friday, we decided to see if we could complete all 16 of the beginner climbs (7 orange and 9 blue) in one session.  We both did it, and fairly easily, in about half an hour.

I've completed all the purple climbs, while Miya has completed most of them (a few are a challenge for her with her shorter reach).  For now we're tidying up the purples and starting to look at the greens.  We're also doing some training drills to strengthen up our hands.

It's a fun new challenge for both of us, and a really nice Daddy-Miya time together.

Athletics: Pentathlon

Yesterday was athletics again -- this time Mulan did her first ever pentathlon.  The results are here.

For the 80m hurdles Mulan improved from last week, getting a new PB (personal best) time of 15.36 sec against a head wind (-1.9m/s).  

Mulan had a solid long jump, getting 4.35m.  What made this jump satisfying was that the wind was only 0.5m/s (anything over 2m/s is considered wind assisted).  Mulan jumped her wind-assisted (4.5m/s) PB of 4.44m two weeks ago.

The shot put was the only event that didn't go as well as hoped, as Mulan was a bit rusty and got two no throws.  But at least she got in a legal throw of 6.80m in her second attempt.  Mulan's PB, from back in February, is 7.66m.

High jump is Mulan's least-practiced event.  While she is starting to learn the Fosbury flop, it still works best to do the scissors in competition (all the other girls in the competition did the flop).  Competing for the first time on rubber, Mulan got a new PB of 1.29m.  We got chatting with one of the officials/parents(?) after the high jump (athletics is always so welcoming and friendly!) and she was very warmly encouraging of Mulan to continue with pentathlon, and to work on her flop.  We'll definitely try to fit it in!

And finally, competing in her first 200m sprint of the season Mulan also got a new PB of 30.90 sec against a head wind (-0.7m/s).

All in all, a very satisfying day.  Mulan fitted in well with the other girls, and the day was fun, friendly and healthily competitive.  While points and places don't matter much, we were delighted that Mulan's all-rounder skills suit the pentathlon and she was competitive with the others, getting 4th overall in the under-14 girls.

More athletics

 I had to record this one!

Yesterday, we were back at Mt Smart Stadium doing more athletics.  Mulan competed in the discus, 80m hurdles and triple jump, while I decided to give the triple jump a go.

Our results are here.

Firstly, and least importantly, me.  Off an 8-stride runup I triple jumped 10.50m.  I'm pretty happy with that, considering I haven't jumped for a couple of years.  If I can strengthen up my knees and ankles I may be able to go off a longer runup, get more speed, and get a bit further.  I see the Auckland record for over 45-year-olds is only 11.27m, so if I trained a bit that's not far off.

And Mulan.

We were hugely delighted with Mulan's triple jump.  In her first ever competition, and off a 10-stride runup, she got 9.53m.

To give some comparison, at the 2019 Auckland secondary schools champs that would have got her second place.  Covid meant there was no 2020 Auckland secondary school champs, but (if homeschoolers were allowed to compete at inter-schools!) Mulan would have dominated the North Harbour schools zone competition back in March (first place was 8.46m).

Mulan's still very young for triple jump, and we don't want any injuries, so it's all very casual at this stage.  The only triple jumping Mulan had done previous to this competition was a couple of training sessions to figure out the steps and runup.  For now we'll keep things going the same way, and just do the occasional competition for fun and see what happens.

Mulan also tried an 80m hurdles race for the first time ever yesterday.  She did it in 15.42s, so not too bad.  It was smooth in parts, but there's lots of room for improvement with getting the steps between the hurdles consistent.

And finally (actually it was first up yesterday), Mulan threw the 1kg discus for the first time in competition.  This season she's moving up from 750g, and so the heavier weight is a new challenge.  But it wasn't a bad first effort, getting 17.62 from a standing throw (her spin throw on her third attempt wobbled a bit!).

(This morning, as I write this, I'm a bit stiff and achy from my few jumps yesterday!)

Rock climbing

 Miya's 10th birthday was a month and a half ago.

She'd decided she wanted to go rock climbing, but Covid happened and we had to postpone.

Finally, yesterday, with the Covid Alert Level back down to 1, and the school kids back at school, the family spent a couple of hours at Northern Rocks, a bouldering centre just five minutes drive from us.

It was brilliant, and we all had an awesome time.

What's great about these bouldering walls, rather than the old-style climbing walls, is that we don't need to rope up with belays and so on.  The set climbs, all colour-coded for different levels of difficulty, are never too high to need ropes.

Predictably, the girls got into it very quickly, even though they'd only been rock climbing once before in their lives.  Mama was not too bad, either, and did most of the orange climbs (the easiest level).

Northern Rocks has a special on at the moment, that first-timers can come back at no cost for the next week to climb as often as they want.

We took advantage of that, and the girls and I went back again today for another hour (just paying for shoe hire).  The three of us are all working on purple climbs (third easiest level, after orange and blue), with me mostly getting them and the girls sometimes getting them.

We took our camera this time:

The biggest challenge for all of us right now is that our hands are a bit sore, with blisters and worn fingertips.  But we'll quickly recover.

Miya is keen to continue with climbing, and we're now looking into getting a membership there.  The thought is that we stop our YMCA gym family membership and instead get a membership at Northern Rocks.  We're also looking into Miya joining a class there from term 1 next year (too busy this year!) -- we hear that if Miya progresses past purple level and starts on green then she should be good to attend the more advanced Thursday class.

Athletics: congratulations Mulan

Mulan competed in her first ever senior athletics competition on Saturday, and, in her first competition of the season, came away with two PBs (personal bests).

These competitions happen most Saturdays at Mt Smart Stadium, so I'll probably get bored with reporting them here each week.  But for now, well done Mulan!

The results are here.

Mulan got 4.44m in the long jump and 1:12.27 in the 400m.

Mulan and Miya also joined the children's training session in the morning before the competition, working on relays, hurdles and triple jump.

Philanthropy

 This is a very useful article about philanthropy.

As Brian Leiter rightly points out when commenting on this article,

There should be no need for philanthropy; the state should impose an essentially confiscatory tax on all income and wealth above some appropriate threshhold ($10 million?  25 million?).  Then we could have a civilized society!

As I've said before, I like the idea of an inheritance tax acting as this essentially confiscatory tax.

Money makes money, and inter-generational wealth often grows from merely being there and not because of any special ability/effort of the children of wealthy parents.

As I see it, wealthy parents deserve, and have the right, to give a comfortable life to their children.  But excessive inter-generational wealth creates many social problems and harms.

My suggestion is that each child receives an inheritance of something like at most 100 years times the median yearly income (in New Zealand this is currently 100 x $52,000 = $5.2 million), and then any remaining assets are 100% taken as tax.

This inheritance would still be enough so that all children of super-rich parents wouldn't have to work a day in their lives, and could comfortably live off their parents' money.  For example, they could have a $2 million home, and then invest the remaining $3 million, with a simple 5% return giving them $150,000 a year to live on.  These children would still be comfortably in the rich category without working at all.

I read that Donald Trump inherited over US$413 million.  I wonder what the world would be like if he had been given just one or two percent of that and then lived his life in comfortable, lazy obscurity.

Athletics: Aspire Development Academy

 For the past few days the girls and I have been at Mt Smart Stadium doing athletics.

We'd signed Mulan and Miya up for the Aspire Development Academy, a training camp for 10- to 17-year-olds.

(Mulan has decided that athletics is now her number two activity, behind ballet, and this season we're planning on doing a lot more athletics competitions and training.  For the past few years we've been focusing on music on Saturdays, so not attending athletics competitions, but from now on athletics will be Mulan's Saturday priority.)

The camp was excellent, and I highly recommend it.  Miya, in the 10-to-11 years group, had two days, while Mulan, in the 12-to-17 years group had three days.  We were there from 9:30 to 3pm each day.

What I especially liked about it was that we had a bunch of 50 or so kids all extremely motivated and just loving getting outside and having a serious run around.  They were all pushing themselves hard (and sometimes it was pretty hard work!), and happy to be pushing themselves hard.  There is a huge satisfaction to be able to control the body with strength and speed in that way, and the kids were getting it.  It was an inspiring environment to be in.

The coaches were also all excellent.  For me, coming back into it after 20+ years, it's interesting to see the big-name athletes from my day now there as senior coaches.  Amazingly, my old PE teacher from secondary school was coaching there, too -- Mulan and Miya had a few super-beneficial sessions with him.

As far as I could see, the only downside to the camp was that there were too many kids for the coaches to do a lot of fine-tuning with individuals.  For the most part it was group sessions rather than precise one-to-one technique adjustments.  While this was perfect for both Mulan and Miya, given the level they are currently at, I can see how some more experienced teen athletes may outgrow this type of camp and not get as much out of it.