5.10b

I kept saying that I would try harder climbs and really challenge myself. On Monday I actually climbed some 5.10s at the gym out of town and they were more like 5.8s-5.9s at my local gym. Apparently, and fortunately, most of the route setters at my gym are actually pretty true to the outdoors. Of course, its also time to get my butt out there. Today I attempted a 5.10b. It was actually way more fun than anything I had been climbing and proved to me that I have actually improved a lot. I fell twice on the start and then got it, fell again around the middle, was completely pumped out and had to come down. I tried a second time after a break, completed the first stretch quite well, fell a couple of times at the middle and eventually after several hangs to get my strength back, made it to the top. Of course my forearms and fingers are so sore typing this post is a workout in itself.

Its quite interesting as I think about sports and my life and my friends and my students. Most of my friends were/are exceptional athletes. Maybe not in the sport we do now, but I have (and had in the past) friends who were gymnasts, swimmers, divers, runners, water polo players, triathletes, volleyball players and basketball players at a high enough caliber to impress others. Many of my female friends have taken up running and train for 10ks, half marathons, and (oddly) even full marathons. Sports obviously taught us about some important things: discipline, balance, agility, determination, perseverance, courage, friendship, goal-setting, sportsmanship, commitment, success and failure. There are certainly other ways to learn these things, but I think that for many of my friends sports played a very large part in who we became as adults. We are successful, confident, determined, risk-taking, healthy, active, caring, helpful and mostly well-balanced people. There are ways to teach a lot of those skills/qualities, but athletics is what I know best and seems to be the easiest. For many of my students this year, I think of how much they would benefit from a better integrated physical ed program than I have been able to offer them. It is not merely enough to teach them games as part of a 20 minute time period once a day. It needs to be more wholly integrated into everything we do, somehow. Of course, that's one of those time things and there is so much emphasis on reading, writing and arithmetic that often those students who demonstrate that physical/spatial intelligence do not have opportunities to shine. Now that the study about exercise making you smarter has made waves, I can dedicate a little more time each day to incorporating it into our learning...and no one can get on my case about it because there's research to prove it. I'm thinking football drills as we chant sums, like when the are in rows running in place and then have to drop and do push-ups and repeat. Let's whip those first graders into some real shape. Relax, I will stick to what I know.

(Picture from: gotolatin.com)