i've learned something

.
i've learned that the shoe you have on your foot makes an enormous difference to what your body is doing. how have i learned this?

well lsd and i are the same size (probably not in pants but otherwise yeah) so i borrowed his shoes (la sportiva testarossas) and took them for a test drive. he handed them to me and said 'i'm sorry but i've just cost you $150 bucks'
so i laughed and i put them on and yeah. he really did.

it's not just that they're fucking awesome, which they are. it's that it brings home to me just how shitty my shoes actually are. my shoes suck.

[it is amazing how distracting looking for shoe pictures is when you want new shoes]

fortunately i felt a little better because lsd's other shoes (this might not be them... the colours don't seem right):

sucked. well okay they didn't suck but i didn't like them nearly as much. or perhaps it was that i didn't feel really like i was stuck to the wall with them at all. i preferred the fit to mine although i didn't love the heel of the slipper but i know that that would come with time. mostly they just didn't have any more grab than the crap that i have now. the testarossa's? i felt like spider man!

regardless i don't want lace up shoes so of course i fall for a pair of lace up shoes. that's one thing that lsd and hcg agree on actually; that those la sportiva testarossa's are rocking shoes. i think the other thing hcg and lsd agree on is that i'm fun to make fun of. was an entertaining dinner anyway.

it was cool to really try shoes instead of putting them on and doing three moves with them while you're cold and not in climbing mode and on the shitty wall at the shoe store. i still want to try on a lot more shoes but my idea of what i want in feel and fit is really different now.

i want WAY smaller shoes than i thought that i did. way smaller. like one and a half or two sizes smaller.


anyway i climbed a lot of routes in the slippers and i did a couple of traverses with the lace ups and i was also concentrating on moving slowly and i think i sort of didn't notice how hard i was working because new bits were sore and i didn't notice them at the time.

i've sort of developed a list of body parts that i should pay attention to while climbing because they are the bits most likely to hurt not so good the next day... and that list is wrong in different shoes.

i'm sore in my inner thighs like crazy and i don't usually feel them at all when i climb. not at all. that had actually concerned me a little but it had never occured to me that that could be caused by my shoes. who knew.

i knew i wasn't using that inner line enough, in fact it's something that happens to me when i do pilates or other exercise as well. the one thing all of my teachers agree on is that i'm not into that inner foot/big toe line nearly enough. it NEVER occured to me that in climbing that would relate to the shoes. in retrospect it's totally obvious.

this has then passed up my body and caused the inner line of my arms and some new back muscles to greet me with a grimace.

it's pretty neat stuff this new shoe idea.

thanks for the loans lsd, it's made shopping a lot easier.

course it's also made the need for the shopping WAY more immediate.

way more.

way.