Climbing 7b and publishing in POM

After over a decade of rock-climbing at the intermediate to advanced grades, I finally broke into expert grade, with my climb of Sloper, French 7b (YDS 5.12b), in Badami. A grade I never imagined was possible for me in this lifetime (I did progress to these levels rapidly in alpinism, climbing icy north faces in the Alps, but I have shelved it due to life constraints).

A few weeks ago, as part of my day job, I got my research published in POM journal, the top journal in my area. It is the culmination of seven years of intense work, sleepless nights, numerous rejections and revisions, ably supported by my co-authors (Narendra, incidentally, has also been my climbing partner for the longest time).

And today I set the course record on Nandi hills steps among Strava users in public domain, with my son Rahul unexpectedly offering to pace me and finishing with me (to give an idea, it takes 15 minutes by car/road).

All these activities fiercely competed for my intellectual, physical and emotional energies. Some of these involved direct trade-offs: the body adaptations for climbing and endurance running conflict since climbing is all about explosive power, upper body strength (besides technique), whereas running is all about slow-twitch muscles and lungs and strong legs. Both long hours of running and sitting before the computer impair hip flexibility, which is crucial for climbing, so I had to devote additional stretching to compensate for that. Plus accommodating rest days (err.. what’s that?). Within the limits set by normal family commitments!

What helped immensely was following a custom training plan that an ace-climber-friend of mine wrote for me, which involved advanced exercises done at maximal effort, but only once a week. His words: “I’ve never seen anyone as dedicated and meticulous as you when it comes to training!”. It made up for my constraints, like I could not go to exotic climbing destinations like Sethan and climb with the best climbers and up my game, as I had to calculate the ROI on every hour I spent. Likewise, I began to run only once a week but I made sure the training load was intense and progressed to doing 2-3 laps of Nandi hills with 13kg pack, always turning back because I ran out of time, not because I felt done. I could not spare 10-12 hours a week to run like my runner friends, but this would do.

To give some context, 7b is not Elite; it is more like running a 3-hr marathon while the world’s best are pushing 2-hrs. Nor is the publication: while it was the first time research from my school was published in a journal of this level, profs in the word’s top B schools publish dozens of them. And several excellent researchers don’t bother to chase exclusive journals.

Frankly, while these things meant a lot to me, what level you climb or publish in or run don’t mean anything in the larger scheme of things, they are mostly storms in one’s teacup. I do believe, however, that they hold instrumental and personal value: to motivate you to work hard toward a better version of yourself. The real value I derive from these endeavours are the friendships, the climbing and running partners and co-authors who gave meaning to these pursuits. And time management (running till you feel your lungs bursting, or climbing till your fingertips are raw and muscles screaming, is pure pleasure and easy in comparison!). And family support, or shall I say indulgence!