The Challenge

The day of my birthday challenge dawned bright and clear. Now it’s funny typing that because I feel like that usually implies the time before someone awakes, but on challenge day I was actually starting to run as dawn broke. It was a balmy 45 degrees out in the Baylands and I was pretty cold for the first mile or so. It was rather dark and somewhat foggy when I started out and I started wondering what I was doing. I felt somewhat reassured as I saw a few other runners and some bird watchers, but mostly I was thinking, “What’s wrong with these people that they’re out so early in the cold?”

As the sun peeked up from behind the mountains, I was rewarded with the beautiful sight of sunrise over the Baylands. I saw tons of cool birds (white pelicans, egrets, American coots, etc.) and was almost attacked by a flock of Canada geese. OK, the last is probably an exaggeration, but I’m always scared that Canada geese will charge me and peck my eyes out. The sun brought some warmth and I was able to strip off some of my layers and finish my run more comfortably.

Tom was waiting for me in the parking lot with a warm car and bags filled with 33 donut holes. We headed back to my brother’s house for second breakfast and the beginning of my eating challenge. I showered, changed into cycling clothes, and prepared for the second part of my physical challenge. Tom and my brother came along for the riding part of my challenge. We departed from my brother’s a little later than scheduled and rode along the Steven’s Creek trail, Baylands trails, and finally up onto the Dumbarton Bridge. The halfway point for the ride was the high point of the bridge so we turned around there and rode back to Mountain View. Every time we stopped to use the bathroom or eat some Gu, I ate a donut hole. Due to our numerous stops and my slow pace, the ride took 45 minutes longer than I had anticipated. But I was so excited about the ride that I didn’t care. The weather was perfect for the ride and the lovely bike trails left me longing for living in the Bay Area again.

When we got back to my brother’s house, I showered and changed again, this time into climbing clothes. While I showered, Tom went to La Bamba (our all-time favorite burrito place) to pick up lunch. I was already starting to feel sick from eating donut holes and only made it through half of my burrito. I took a few minutes to lie down on the couch, which was not scheduled. Between this and the ride taking a long time, we wound up departing for the climbing gym an hour later than I had planned. My brother had to go in to work, so Tom and I set out alone for the gym.

By the time we got to the gym, I was feeling fairly exhausted. I took a quick tour of the gym to scope the routes and learned that there were more than enough routes in the range of difficulty that I wanted to climb. This was reassuring because it meant that I wasn’t going to be forced to climb harder routes than I wanted to. I tied in and started up the first climb. Things seemed like they weren’t going to be too bad, but as I rested between routes, I kept eating more donut holes. The more I ate, the sicker I felt and the longer I rested in between routes.

Finally I came to the realization that if I didn’t stop eating donut holes, I wouldn’t be able to keep climbing. So I stopped eating at 18 donut holes and decided to save the rest for the bar. My friends Katie and Sasha stopped by to give me some encouragement and my brother showed up as I was finishing climbing. I climbed 12 5.8’s, 18 5.9’s, and 3 5.10a’s. I was feeling very accomplished until I remembered that I still had 15 donut holes to eat, 28 people to talk to, and the full 33 shots of beer to drink! I only managed to talk to 5 people at the gym and only two of them were self initiated. I quickly regretted having set this part of the challenge for myself. I hate talking to strangers! What was I thinking?

We left the gym and headed back to my brother’s place once again. I showered again and changed into sweats before we departed for dinner. We had some delicious ramen at my favorite ramen house in Mountain View and then we left for the bar. Arriving at Fred’s Place, I was reminded what a dive it is. As we walked in I was wondering how in the world I was going to fulfill the talking part of my challenge. It was a Monday night and the bar was far from filled.

Our friends Dave and Tina (and Tina’s friend, Dan) met us at Fred’s for the drinking part of the challenge. After drinking several shots of beer and eating some more donut holes, Tina dragged me over to a group of six people. She told them I had something that I needed to tell them. So I launched into a description of my challenge. After the ice had been broken I continued around the bar by myself, talking to some of the weirdest people I’ve ever talked to.

There was “pink sweatshirt guy”, who I guess is a regular at Fred’s. He looked homeless to me and might be the drunkest person I’ve ever seen. I was nearly in hysterics as I explained my challenge to him. I’d call it a conversation, but it was really a monologue since he didn’t respond to anything I said. He did, however, give me a thumbs-up at the end. I started talking to two middle aged men who were sitting at the bar. They were self-described “wolves” who talked about carrying me out of there on their backs. They asked if kissing 33 men was part of my challenge and said all sorts of other creepy things. I wound up staying with them for a while because they bought me four shots of beer that they insisted I drink. Tom finally came over and saved me.

As it turned out, I talked to every single person in the bar (which was 20). This brought my total up to 25. I made it through 22 shots of beer and 28 donut holes before I called it quits. We had to get up early the next morning, pick up Tom’s mom and drive all the way home and I was having a hard time imagining doing this severely hung-over and sugar-coma-ed. Some might say that I failed in my challenge, which in some respects I did, but I feel pretty good about what I did accomplish. And I’ve already started planning next year’s challenge because this was the best birthday I’ve had in a long time!

Setbacks

Since last writing, I was feeling really fired up about training hard. I climbed one day at the gym, ran two 6.6 mile runs, and did a hard one hour ride on the trainer. But then the setbacks began. And somehow all the things that I had feared would happen when I first started planning my challenge did happen. I got injured, sick, and the weather turned rotten.

During my last session of climbing last Thursday, my pointer finger on my right hand started to hurt. I cut the evening short figuring it was better to take care of my hands than to train anymore. I appear to have tendonitis in my finger and was in pretty bad pain the day after climbing (I made a makeshift splint at work because movement of any kind was hurting). It’s been a week since it started hurting and while the pain has lessened immensely, I can still feel it when I grip anything. I’ve been icing it several times a day and taking ibuprofen. Hopefully with a few more days rest it will be feeling even better.

On Saturday morning, I woke up with a sore throat. I spent the weekend reading on the couch and taking lots of Zicam and vitamin C instead of training. I figured that by Monday I’d been on the mend. Instead, I woke up Monday full blown sick and spent most of the remaining week at home. I managed a half day today, but was so exhausted that I had to come home after my class left at 11:30.

I’ve been checking Mountain View weather obsessively in the last week and it’s gone from bad (30% of showers) to worse (70% chance of rain with a high of 59). So I first toyed with moving my challenge to Saturday. However, when I considered how rotten I felt today, I decided the wisest decision would be to move the challenge to Monday. By then hopefully, I’ll be all better (including my tendonitis) and the weather is supposed to be clear. Sadly, since Monday is only a holiday for me, the supporters of my challenge (friends who were going to do various parts with me) will be at work. My boyfriend is currently my only support.

While things aren’t going exactly as I had planned, I’m still pretty excited about the challenge itself. I may not be as prepared as I wanted to, but I’m fairly confident that I will be able to finish my goal.

Birthday Challenge (leading up to)

At some point during the past year, I became acquainted with the concept of a birthday challenge (for more info visit www.birthdaychallenge.com). I was immediately intrigued by the idea and it didn’t take me long to decide that I was going to do a challenge for my 33^rd birthday. By May of this year, I had already formed part of the challenge in my mind and completed a trial run of one portion of it. It was absolutely devastating.

My boyfriend was doing a birthday challenge that included 29 top rope gym climbs. I decided I would join him in that part of the challenge and see if I could do 33 climbs. I figured it wouldn’t be that hard because it was only one part of my boyfriend’s challenge. We spent 7+ hours at the gym that day. I finished my mini-challenge just before the gym closed. As I lay on the floor absolutely exhausted, I had the insightful realization that I was going to need to start doing some serious training for my challenge.

But before I could come up with a training plan, I needed a challenge. It took me some time to come up with a challenge that fit me just right. I decided that since this is my first challenge, the goal should be to have fun. So I chose some activities that I like to do: rock climbing, running, cycling, eating and drinking. Up until a few days ago, my challenge was to climb 33 top rope climbs in the gym (5.8 and harder); run 6.6 miles (3.3 x 2); ride 33 miles on my bike; eat 33 donut holes; and drink 33 shots of beer. After writing up my challenge to share with my friends and family, I decided to add one final element: talk to 33 people and explain what a birthday challenge is. It turned out that no one I know already knew about birthday challenges. I figured I might as well spread the good word and try to inspire some new people to live a little while I have fun myself.

With 13 days to go, I wish I could say that I have been training my ass off for the last six months, but I’d be lying. This is not to say that I haven’t been training, it’s just that I haven’t done a fantastic job of sticking to a schedule. It turns out that it’s hard to stick to a training schedule if you haven’t made one. Looking back at my calendar, I’ve tallied up the training days that seem like they include some serious and specific training. It’s looking fairly pitiful:

• 9 rides between 10 and 33 miles long
• 6 spin classes
• A handful of 30-60 minute workouts on the exercise bike
• 5 6-7 ½ mile runs
• A handful of 3-5 mile runs
• A handful of running interval workouts
• 4 days of indoor climbing with specific goals for number of problems/routes to be completed (only one of these days was 100% successful)
• 2-3 days of climbing per week (indoor/outdoor, bouldering, sport, trad, and top rope)

I have spent zero time training for the eating part of my challenge. I love donuts, but limit myself in their consumption. I’ve probably eaten about five donuts this year. I love beer too, but I’ve been such a light-weight in the past few years that drinking two beers in an evening is an accomplishment—a super-tipsy accomplishment.

My challenge is turning out to be more challenging than I was originally intending due to the location of my challenge in space and in time. Although I’m currently living in southern California, I decided early on that I wanted to be in my old stomping grounds in the Bay Area for my birthday. This decision was based primarily on the fact that I wanted to climb at Planet Granite in Sunnyvale rather than deal with a sub-par SoCal gym. However, this has placed some restrictions on my day.

My birthday falls on a Sunday this year and PG closes at 6:00 p.m. on Sundays. In addition to this time constraint, there are only 10 hours of daylight (sunrise is at 6:54 and sunset is at 4:56). Another factor that I have to consider is Bay Area weather. I feel like I rarely had a precipitation-free birthday in northern California. And whether it’s raining or not, it will almost certainly be cold. I’ve decided that I will run rain or shine, but I will be skipping the ride if it rains. I only started cycling in January (FYI, prior to January I had never ridden more than three miles) and I’ve never ridden in the rain. I have my limits in terms of challenges. I’m working on a substitution for the ride that will probably involve 33 reps of 33 exercises.

Here’s my schedule of events (weather permitting):

6:00 a.m. wake up, eat, dress

6:30 run

8:00 eat, change, stretch

9:00 ride, eat donut holes

12:30 eat, change, stretch

1:30 climb, talk to strangers, eat donut holes

6:00 shower, change, stretch, eat, talk to strangers

8:00 drink, talk to strangers, eat remaining donut holes

A small part of me is starting to feel intimidated by this whole challenge and wondering what the hell I’m thinking. But it’s not called birthday “pretty hard” and at least I’ll remember turning 33.