Wall Runner 2025

Welcome back, blogger. Long time, no post.

After taking a few years to finish my Master’s degree, move to New York, and start a teaching career, ya girl is back on the blog. Besides my noble academic pursuits, I’ve also picked up a new hobby over the past year and a half—or, more accurately, resuscitated a hobby from the depths of my awkward adolescence. I’ve started rock climbing again.

If you’re picturing me free-ranging up a jagged cliff face a la Princess Bride, allow me to burst that bubble. Try multiple ten-foot indoor walls encrusted with other people’s chalk and finger skin. The floors are cushioned with thick mats and the water cooler produces flavored seltzer. It’s as close as I’m going to get to free soloing in Queens.

Honestly, I love it. Climbing is the only sport I’ve ever been half good at. I’m short, slow, and compact, with tiny hands and feet that make every ball I’ve ever handled look giant (go ahead and laugh). My joints are approximately 70 years older than the rest of me, so running is out. I also sink in all bodies of water, making low-impact swimming a no-go. But I build muscle fast and pack it on with the density of a curvy cannonball. I also have no fear of heights, which is bad for my genetic potential but good for this particular brand of manufactured risk-taking.

Now that I’m back on that vertical grind, I thought I’d share some lessons I’ve had to re-learn as I jumped, sometimes literally, back into the sport.

1.        Learn to fall

The first thing you learn when you start climbing is how to fall. An instructor will tell you to climb halfway up the wall and let go. A good fall lets your body go slack, your arms close to your core. You land on your back, or touch your heels and roll. Either way, you should end up becoming familiar with the dust on the ceiling beams that no cleaner will ever reach. 

The most common misconception about climbing is that your goal is not to fall. This is the quickest way to set yourself up for failure, because falling is inevitable. Good climbers fall constantly and consistently. But good climbers also know how to fall without injury to body or ego. The fundamental mental switch between falling as failure and falling as progress can be a real barrier for beginner climbers (also for type-A personalities, perfectionists, eldest daughters, and anyone living under a capitalist system that fundamentally ties our worth to our productivity).

A new climber says: Falling means I’m failing. A good climber says: Falling means I’m trying.

2.        There are no shortcuts

New climbers will look at a bouldering wall and say, “I can get to the top.” And they usually can. They can eschew the routes and sometimes even reach the top of the wall just with a stretch. But the end result is not the point. The point is the process—the route you’re trying because it’s possible, even though it’s hard. When the feeling of overcoming the challenge is the point, there’s no way to cheat. Like Yoda said, there is only doing and not doing.

This can be frustrating. But can also be a huge relief to people like me who are occasionally tempted to take the easy way out. When I try to run, I’m ashamed by how I spend the whole time fighting the urge to walk. But when I’m climbing, I’m trying. I’m on the wall, and I have to keep myself there. There is no room for half-measures even when I most want to take them. When I want to stop pulling from the dried-up well of my motivation and still accomplish something, I go climbing. It feels like a cheat code in itself.

3.        You’re stronger than you think.

This may not apply to everyone, but it applies to most. We often underestimate what we’re capable of on the wall—dismissing a higher grade before we’ve tried it, eyeing the size of a handhold and assuming it won’t support our weight. We cut ourselves down and make ourselves smaller. Sometimes we’re afraid of the pain. Sometimes it’s the humiliation of people seeing us fail. But to quote the now-international athletic brand started in my hometown, a few blocks from my first climbing gym—just do it.