When you’re hiking, cycling, climbing or doing other sporting activities it is easy to forget to stop tracking an activity. When you’re at home or static this is less critical. When you get into a car after a hike or other activity that mistake will screw up your average speed and other data.
Yesterday I realised that I had forgotten to stop tracking on my Suunto device and on my apple watch.
Recently I bought a Training band and a rubber egg (otherwise known as a Pilates Stretching Hand Rehabilitation Ball) instead of a Fingerboard. I want to strengthen my fingers to progress as a climber. I often know what to do but finger strength is the limiting factor.
Ever since I saw fingerboards in web videos and in person I have wanted to get one but at first didn’t know where to get one and then didn’t find one at an acceptable price.
The more often you boulder and climb, the stronger the muscles that pull the tendons to your fingers become, and the stronger those muscles become, the higher the grade of your climbs. Hand holds are not the rungs of a ladder or via ferrata. Sometimes you can use your entire hand but at other moments you will use just the fingertips of one hand.
On a climb such as this one I managed to get up two thirds to three fifths of the way up before my fear of falling took over.
Frederik Riedel - 4th Jan, 2019
Hey Richard! Thanks a lot for using my app, and thanks for the great feedback, I definitely appreciate that. The upcoming update of iRedpoint has a big improvement for the top rope tracking algorithm, I hope you’ll like it. Also the ability to switch the climbing activity type during a session makes a lot of sense to me; I put it on my todo list!
The Apple watch and other devices have integrated barometers that allow them to track changes in altitude. Iredpoint by Frogg GMBH is one app that takes advantage of this. It allows you to tell the app what type of climbing you are doing as well as the difficulty.
Types of Climbing This app allows you to choose the type of climbing that you are doing. You can choose between bouldering, top rope climbing, sport climbing, trad climbing, multirope climbing, free solo, aid climbing and last, and most awesome of all, Via Ferrata.
Yesterday I had a morning ride because I wanted to participate in the Tour de Zwift event. Yesterday the track was London and I was riding slowly for the first half, conserving energy. Eventually, when I got warmed up I started to ride harder and harder until I was overtaking quite a few other cyclists. I took advantage to play on the sprint and got the Green jersey. I took some time to recover and then I pushed myself.
The Klettersteig Rider 3.0 is a dual system via ferrata kit. It has a carabiner like standard via ferrata kits have and a “rider” system. The “rider” system fixes to the via ferrata cable and progresses with you. As you get to a part where you need to switch you move the rider system up first and then you move the carabiner. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lmmXodEZQxo
What I like about this system is that if you slip or lose grip of the rungs for any reason you will only fall the length of the connector rather than the length from where you are to the most recent pig tail.
Documenting climbing feats is an interesting challenge because you deal with issues of accessibility, projects that can last for months or even years and in some cases you’re dealing with the prospect of the climber understanding the problem, and then achieving his goal. For two or three years I really explored ideas for a climbing documentary before losing steam. My interest in the topic was still there but I couldn’t think of whom to put in front of the camera.
One of the reasons for which this film is so powerful is that it’s written in the way that Heinrich Harrer wrote about the Eiger. It’s documenting not just a single attempt but the entire process. In doing so we get to know the people well. It gives us some context about their early days and then it spends a big amount of time on the process that led to a succesful ascent of the Dawn Wall.
After just three climbing activities the Apple watch screen broke, rendering its smart features unusable. Indoor Climbing and the Apple Watch are a bad mix. They are a bad mix because the Apple watch has an unprotected glass screen. The screen is so exposed that last Thursday I shattered the screen without realising until I got home and tried to use it but the capacitive screen did not respond. At first I couldn’t see anything so I tried to feel it with my nail (whatever is left of it after an evening of climbing) and I could hardly feel anything.