Boulder bash

We were at Northern Rocks' Boulder Bash yesterday.

It was the climbing gym's second birthday, and a chance for a big group climbing event.

The idea was that everyone had two and a half hours to climb their best ten climbs (or more, if they wanted), and then add up their points for each climb.

Miya signed up for it (of course!), choosing to miss her Saturday morning music lessons.  Mulan didn't go, preferring to attend her ballet lessons.  Frustratingly, I couldn't climb (elbow is still too sore), so I was Miya's support crew only.

It was an honesty-based system, with everyone marking their own climbs.  Everyone also self-assessed themselves into one of three levels -- beginner, intermediate or advanced.

Intermediate sounded most like Miya, with "You’ve been climbing for a little while, climbing purples and greens, and projecting yellow.  Grade reference V3 – V6".

Miya's been practicing her greens for the past few weeks, and she has six current climbs well practiced (here, here and here).  Then, during Thursday's class she completed two more that she'd been projecting.

So, prior to the start, Miya's ambitious goal was to get all eight of her greens, plus a few purples.

Delightedly, Miya went through each of her greens, ticking them off one by one and doing all eight.

We also found a new green which had been freshly added for the day.  It looked doable, so Miya had a go.  And she got it first try!!  Awesome!

Miya then finished off with four higher-scoring purples.

Her score card was:

(Ignore the circled numbers -- there was a bit of confusion at the beginning with how the climbs were numbered.  It turned out that climbs were labeled with their points value, not their climb number, so our pre-start planning/circling was meaningless.)

It was a great effort, and Miya did even better than we'd hoped.  Miya even came away with a spot prize T-shirt!

We stayed until the end, watching the 22 finalists attempting new unseen climbs.  Wow, they are amazing!

Lots of fun, and a hugely enjoyable day.  (The only downside was that the DJ-hired music was too loud and so exhausting.)

FBI physical fitness test

Magnus Midtbø did the FBI physical fitness test (PFT) last week.

That meant that we had to do it, too.

So, today the four of us went out to our local rubber athletics track (Millennium) and had a go.

There are two versions of the test -- the standard PFT has four parts (push ups, sit ups, 300m, 1.5 mile), while the tactical recruitment programme (TRP) PFT also adds pull ups.

The points allocation table is here:

The idea is that you need to get at least 1 point from each of the parts --if you miss the minimum on any part, then you fail the test.  Also, for the standard test you need to get at least 12 points, while for the TRP test you need to get at least 20 points.

To make it harder, you only have at most 5 minutes rest between doing each part.  Not much recovery time!!

We followed Magnus' version of the test, which was slightly different from this official version, which we found afterwards.  The official version orders the push ups between the two runs, giving more recovery time and making the test easier.

For Magnus' version, push ups and sit ups were as many as you could do in a minute, while pull ups had unlimited time.

So, how did we do?

Miya

• Push ups: 21 (2 points)
• Sit ups: 47 (5 points)
• 300m run: 63.2sec (1 point)
• 1.5 mile run: 13:29min (2 points)
• Pull ups: 6 (6 points)

PFT total points: 10

TRP total points: 16

Mulan

• Push ups: 31 (5 points)
• Sit ups: 46 (4 points)
• 300m run: 50.7sec (9 points)
• 1.5 mile run: 13:26min (2 points)
• Pull ups: 3 (3 points)

PFT total points: 20

TRP total points: 23

Me

• Push ups: 30 (1 point)
• Sit ups: 62 (10 points)
• 300m run: 47.3sec (4 points)
• 1.5 mile run: 12:06min (2 points)
• Pull ups: 0 (0 points)

(I didn't do the pull ups, because of my golfer's elbow soreness.  When I'm uninjured I can do about 13 (6 points).)

PFT total points:17

TRP total points: 17 (or 23?)

Mama

• Push ups: 0 (-2 points)
• Sit ups: 23 (-2 points)
• 300m run: 72sec (-2 points)
• 1.5 mile run: 17:29min (-2 points)
• Pull ups: 0 (-2 points)

PFT total points:-8

TRP total points: -10

Not bad us!!  Mulan and I passed, and Miya was very close to passing.

But before we praise ourselves too much, we have to admit we cheated slightly.  We gave ourselves a bit more time after each of the runs (maybe 10 minutes instead of 5 minutes).  We definitely need to work on our recovery fitness.

(Sadly, we also need to be US citizens and aged between 23 and 36, to be eligible to join the FBI.  Oh well, at least we'd stand a chance to outrun them if we had to!)

More climbing

Northern Rocks reset a few climbs yesterday.

Today, Miya tried them out.  This is her on the new green climb:

The jump was the trickiest bit, and took several attempts.  But once she worked out the movement she was getting it every time.

Another day another green

At the end of Thursday's rock climbing session, Miya started projecting another green climb.  She got all of the parts, but her forearms were too pumped to put it together.

So, today she worked on it again.  This was her second time completing it:

Next session she'll probably work on it a bit more to polish it.  Another few times and it'll be smooth.

(Of course, Miya's completely in charge of what she climbs.  I'm just there keeping her company.)

Today's climbing videos

It's school holidays, and classes are taking a break for now.

After a term of rock climbing classes at Northern Rocks, Miya is looking much stronger than she did back in December when we last videoed some climbs.

Here's five greens and a purple she did today:

I'm not climbing at the moment as I've got a bit of climber's/golfer's elbow.  I guess it's been too much too quickly for the old man.  While Miya is on the wall, I'm mostly in the weights area.

Athletics New Zealand Interprovincials

Over Easter, Mulan had a trip down to Palmerston North for the athletics New Zealand interprovincial (IP) competition.

It was something of a relief that this finally happened, as last year's competition was cancelled because of Covid.  For the past few weeks we were counting down the days to IP, checking the news that there were no community Covid cases!  (Thanks team-of-five-million for keeping us all collectively safe and free!)

Mulan was selected into the Auckland team, in the 13 girls grade.  Huge WELL DONE!!!!  And congrats to all those selected in all the teams -- it is a great achievement, and there are some amazing athletes.  Getting to compete against the best in the country is always something special.

The IP is a team competition, where the focus is on each athlete gaining points to add to their province's team score.  Team support, including team chants and friendships, are a big part of the weekend.

Us family didn't go; Mulan went with the team.  While it was sad to miss seeing her compete, it was better for her to have a time without us.

It was an early start Friday morning, dropping her off at the team bus at Mt Smart Stadium at 7 in the morning.  And then we picked her up again Monday evening.

In between, the athletes competed both Saturday and Sunday, and had a dance/party until midnight on Sunday.

For her final competition of the season, Mulan had awesome performances - two PBs plus another couple of solid results.

First up on Saturday, Mulan ran the 400m.  Throughout the season, Mulan had almost never done any specific running training (no time, with all her other activities).

But two weeks out from the competition we decided to do a bit.  She'd run a new PB of 1:11.06 at the Auckland Champs two weeks before the IPs.  It was a great run, but her legs struggled for the final 50m.  We needed a quick bit of strengthening up.

So, most days for that two-week period, Mulan and I biked to the track and ran 300m reps.  It was quick and simple, tucked into our busy day.  We both ran together, doing two (and then three) reps of 300m at around 55 seconds with 4 minutes recovery between.

The result was that at the IPs Mulan ran 1:09.17!  Two seconds is an incredible improvement in such a short time.  The training worked, and good on Mulan!  Mulan said her legs felt so much stronger in the final straight.

Given this, the two of us plan to do some winter running training.  Likely, once a week we'll do things like uphill/stairs reps of 40 or 50 seconds.  See if we can both get stronger and increase the number of reps we can do before our legs get too wobbly.

Next, Mulan did the shot put.  She had a solid throw of 7.66m (her PB is 8.03m).

Mulan's final Saturday event was her favourite, the long jump.  Again, she had a solid result, with 4.27m (her PB is 4.54m).

On Sunday, Mulan did her final individual event, the discus.  Similar to the 400m, we'd done a bit of training work on this in the several days leading up to the competition.

In particular, we'd worked on getting her foot placement more regular, so that her throws were more consistently in, and she could have confidence to push hard knowing that at least one of her throws should work.

Again, the training paid off.  Mulan improved two metres, with a huge new PB of 22.37m.

Finally, Mulan finished off with running 100m in the 13 girls medley relay (where five runners do 100m, 100m, 200m, 400m, 800m).  The Auckland team came second, behind Canterbury.

Saturday's results are here, and Sunday's results are here.  Plenty of names to look out for in New Zealand sport in the next several years.

That evening, at the IP prizegiving the Auckland team was announced as second overall (behind Canterbury).  Mulan got a well-deserved silver medal.

And with that our athletics season is over.

More lockdown painting

Last month's Covid lockdown was too short.

I'd barely even started my lockdown house painting project when everything opened back up again and we were back to our normal busy life.  Not much time for anything extra.  We've had to step over and around painting gear for the past few weeks.

Here's what our bathroom and toilet looked like a month ago:

And here it is today: