2021 Year in Review; Non-Work
As I’ve done for years. A summary of this life, non-work. Lots of athletic discussion here, as much of this is drawn from my training spreadsheet. But life is more than work and training.
Speed ski mountaineering is weird. And blurry. And bloody. Top of the GT, partway through a 6:26 round trip effort. April 21, 2021. Me and Matt Paul
Especially this year. Three trips back east to visit family. This was very, very refreshing. Especially after a year of Covid family disruption. Rosie and I did a few amazing vacations. Valley of Fire, Capitol Reef, Shawangunk-Catskills backpacking, and the California Coast, in addition to shared family visits.
Speaking of family, we’ve got an expanding one. The genesis of this, of course, is a sort of athletic achievement. There was a week there where I did little other than “what it takes” to grow this family. Ha.
And there were more traditional athletic achievements. In the form of personal bests and mountain achievements. Some of these are also documented in my work annual summary. Guided dozens of really challenging itineraries. And then some cool mountain moves “off the clock”.
In April Matt Paul and I “went for time” on skiing the Grand Teton. 6:26 to climb and ski the Grand Teton isn’t an absolute speed record, but it gets a spot on the list, with an asterisk, for sure. The only faster known times for “skiing” the Grand Teton involved running shoes, the month of July, and a lot less actual skiing. This might be the fastest time anyone has clocked while skiing to and from the valley bottom.
In October I ticked my hardest ever traditionally protected pitch of rock climbing. 5.11c isn’t anywhere close to “world class”, but it represents some focus and improvement on my end. To be honest, that feels as good as any of the more superlative efforts.
Finally, the hard numbers you’ve grown accustomed to:
166 days of explicitly non-work. Any kind of work counts as a day of work. And a day of work “counts” when the primary task for the daylight hours is in some kind of income generation. Freelancing makes it tough to count “work days”, but I solved this problem with a daily check-in question: Was today a day of work? Check yes or no, and add ‘em up at the end of the year. (2019? 159 days of non work. 2020? 123)
1117 hours of action in 2020. (7 year average 1035)
569400 vertical feet ascended (4 year average 600000)
572 climbing pitches (5 year average 544)
36 days alpine climbing (7 year average 28)
289 hours of action on alpine climbing days
87 days backcountry skiing (7 year average 83)
489 hours of backcountry skiing
3 days bicycling (7 year average 4)
5 hours bicycling
1 day on which the primary exercise was canoeing
25 days in which the primary training was in the climbing gym (6 year average 22)
12 times I went to the climbing gym in addition to some other sort of adventure
26 hours climbing gym
25 days hiking (7 year average 21)
129 hours of hiking
10 days of ice climbing (7 year average 5)
47 hours of ice climbing
86 days of rest (7 year average 87)
10 days rock cragging (5 year average 17)
20 hours of rock cragging
20 days of multi pitch rock climbing (5 year average 26)
72 hours multi pitch rock climbing
4 days running (7 year average 7)
15 hours of running
8 sick/injured days. Two of them attributed to vaccine side effects. 2 attributed to an infected little toe blister. Four attributed to one gnarly week of knee pain. (7 year average 10)
7 days of ski resort (7 year average 7)
11 hours a the ski resort
32 travel days. (7 year average 26)
13 days of weight training, with no other exercise that day (7 year average 15)
13 hours of weight training
All in all, a great year. But, at what cost? What didn’t I do? Mountain time, work, family time, and quality Rosie time filled a vacuum of social time. This damn pandemic. I’ve never been super social, but it is deeply wearing on me. And I’m not alone in the loneliness. At work I have the amazing good fortune to spend intimate time, for hours and days, with small groups of people. We share in that context. It isn’t purely social, especially on my end (roles and boundaries must be clear, for many reasons), but it is more social than many of us are getting. If my observations there are any indication, we have profound problems with social connection right now. Hang tough, world. And reach out.