Neighbourhood Ninja

miss_rynn asked if I could help vorex break into his house, last night. Keys were locked inside, the balcony had a security screen, but there were pipes up the outside wall. It only took a couple of minutes to do, and then I headed back home to cook some dinner for aeliel and delphaeus... but it made me think about a few things.

It drove home how unfit I've become. Climbing the pipes wasn't too hard - I probably could have made it to the 4th floor without much hassle, as the pipes made good footholds. I've lost a huge amount of muscle strength though - even climbing up a retainer wall beside the house was awkward, as I couldn't rely on my arms to lift me.

It's probably not too much of a bad thing, though. I've always been a very messy climber - I'm scrawny enough that I have a good power-to-weight ratio, and I can scramble up most surfaces without sparing a thought about technique. It's why I'm not a particularly good climber - I can tackle moderately difficult climbs faster than most, but I fail horribly at difficult ones. Having lost almost all my upper-body strength over the last six months, I can build it back again while making sure that I can co-ordinate my limbs as much as I need to.

It has now been six months since I got sick, stressed, and thesis-ed to the point where I stopped training. I haven't been to a class since then, and I've only practised to any real extent about five times in that period. I'm going back to my first class on Thursday, and hope to be training 2-3 times a week by July. I'm tired of not having the energy reserves I did last year.

I'm never going to be very solidly built. I've lost muscle mass to the point where most of my clothes are falling off, though - and I certainly haven't managed to replace it with fat. If my healthy weight is generally ~54-56kg, I'm probably having trouble making 50kg at the moment - despite eating huge amounts of food. It's lucky I don't fight in tournaments any more :) The top end of "lightweight" is over 120% of my body mass...