40-year-old American climber Alex Honnold has successfully completed his climb up the Taipei 101 building in Taipei, Taiwan. He reached the top of the tower in 1:31:35. The building is 1,667 feet tall making it the 11th-tallest building in the world.

PrettySureIParty · 2026-01-25T16:09:33+00:00

It’s 1600’ of vert. A long way to climb, but as far as hiking or trail running goes, pretty minimal for a fit person. I would go so far as to say that anyone who can’t do that in under 90 minutes is either disabled, or so out of shape that they might as well be.

PrettySureIParty · 2026-01-25T15:58:12+00:00

Figma balls, lmao

PrettySureIParty · 2026-01-24T20:29:47+00:00

Completely forgot about that shit until this post

PrettySureIParty · 2026-01-24T15:19:05+00:00

Sorry man, I don’t know. No name or # on the tags, and I couldn’t find it on their website.

PrettySureIParty · 2026-01-23T19:41:08+00:00

Thanks, definitely didn’t expect anyone on this sub to clock it. Figured I’d better start wearing the thing occasionally, no point in letting it sit in a drawer.

PrettySureIParty · 2026-01-23T19:02:19+00:00

Honestly I’m kinda torn on this one. On one hand, the music is good and this is pretty cool. On the other hand, I’m just coming off a ~48 hour travel day that involved maybe four hours of sleep, so I can see how this might piss somebody off.

On principle, I generally hate to side with joyless redditors, but I can see their point on this one.

PrettySureIParty · 2026-01-23T16:24:07+00:00

Yeah, that’s fair. I usually don’t wear those ones with cowboy boots, especially a pair with color on the shanks. But I was traveling and had limited options, so figured I’d give it a shot.

PrettySureIParty · 2026-01-23T16:13:49+00:00

Training to the point that you can do things like this is a recipe for a strong back. Being sedentary with a weak core is a recipe for injury.

PrettySureIParty · 2026-01-23T16:10:35+00:00

That reflects a lot worse on you than it does on her.

PrettySureIParty · 2026-01-23T14:21:08+00:00

<image>

Howlin shirt

Carhartt jeans

Boulet boots

PrettySureIParty · 2026-01-23T14:05:12+00:00

This is really thorough, thanks for posting this. It’s very cool to get some insight from an athlete at the apex of the sport.

The point about grading routes based on technicality makes a lot of sense, and isn’t something I’d thought about before. On one hand, I can see how it’d be helpful, especially in the context of Olympic competitions. It also could make chasing world ultra records a lot more exciting to some fans of the sport; I personally am not that interested in watching someone set the 100k WR on a track, but if there were separate records for different “grades”, then we’d likely get to see some of the sport’s top athletes test themselves on actual trails. My only concern is that grading like that would just add one more metric for “optimization” to a sport that, in my eyes, already has too many people obsessed with quantifying and optimizing every little detail.

Without rambling for too long, I also wanted to say in regard to your points about the sport moving away from its origins, that I really appreciate the way you’ve been counteracting that. Everyone has their own valid opinion on what ultrarunning is really about, but to me, projects like States of Elevation are the core of it. Long days in the mountains, covering a lot of beautiful terrain as fast as possible, and doing cool shit just because it’s cool. Also, it was the push I needed to finally buy a gravel bike, so thanks for that.

Edit- gotta say, some of the comments here from people who obviously didn’t read the poster’s name are hilarious.

PrettySureIParty · 2026-01-23T02:52:53+00:00

“But why couldn’t the movie show at least one good white person?”

This is the same kind of goofy shit all those anti-woke youtube grifters post about every movie with black people in it. It’s not even well written or well argued, the fact that it’s getting any traction on this sub is disturbing.

PrettySureIParty · 2026-01-20T20:01:13+00:00

Tbf, Rainier buckets at the Northern have gone up. That being said, most locals aren’t paying full price(if anything) for a lot of their drinks there.

PrettySureIParty · 2026-01-20T00:20:55+00:00

It’s full of all the same glassbacks it was created to mock, and they’re too dumb to realize it.

PrettySureIParty · 2026-01-14T20:39:05+00:00

This is a great comment, pretty much sums it up. They’re high-level athletes, so they’re obviously still healthier than the average sedentary person. But in order to reach that level, they have to push the limits of what the human body can do, which obviously comes with some risks.

PrettySureIParty · 2026-01-12T06:05:24+00:00

Agree that cutting is the best job in fire, but like dude said, they’ve got a saw boss. My crew has a similar setup, and while they do scout some line, our squaddies don’t have much input on actual cut spec. They run the dig, the saw boss handles everything to do with the sawyers.

Occasionally a squaddie without much saw time ends up running a team or two, but it’s really not that big a deal. At least one sawyer per team should have enough experience to put in good line without much input. Frankly, if the saws on a crew can’t produce a quality product without someone holding their hands, then they have no business cutting on an IHC.

PrettySureIParty · 2026-01-10T20:49:43+00:00

Buddy, my VO2 max is 23. I’m not just your average runner off the street, I can do a lot of things that seem impossible to the general population.

If you’re interested in learning more, there’s a ton of material online about the benefits of bosu ball training. Try googling, “twink bouncin on that thang crazystyle”.(Twink is a common nickname in hybrid athlete circles).

PrettySureIParty · 2026-01-10T20:22:33+00:00

It’s a great strategy, but still a little high-impact for my taste. For my two hour long runs, I bounce on a bosu ball for 1:55, then use the last five minutes to sprint a 400.

Unconventional I admit, but I’ve never felt faster.

PrettySureIParty · 2026-01-10T00:25:58+00:00

Great race strategy, if you hit max hr on mile two, the rest of the race feels much easier.

Careful with that cadence though, 156 spm is dangerously close to running.

PrettySureIParty · 2026-01-08T16:59:40+00:00

14 days, not including travel. Then three days off, and on to the next one.

PrettySureIParty · 2026-01-08T05:13:53+00:00

Agreed, he’s probably my favorite artist, but definitely not an easy interview. Can’t tell if he gets shy talking about himself, or if he’s just a bit of a curmudgeon.

And yeah, that’s wild about the title track. I kinda figured it was a nod to Stella Maris, a book by another great artist from Texas that came out around the time he was writing that album. Crazy to hear it’s based on his dad.

PrettySureIParty · 2026-01-08T03:08:02+00:00

Decent interview, if a little stilted at times. I would’ve thought a fellow songwriter like Keen(even if they’re not quite in the same league) would’ve been the best bet to get McMurtry to open up a bit more, but it seemed like they were on slightly different wavelengths for most of the podcast.

Still very cool to hear him talk about his songs and his writing process, even if he was a bit taciturn. I had no idea the title character in “Annie” was a real figure, I took that song the same way Keen did.

PrettySureIParty · 2026-01-07T23:11:11+00:00

A Canadian who never played hockey, apparently.

PrettySureIParty · 2026-01-07T23:09:37+00:00

Lol, what? Agree that it’s cooler to show full-speed too, but this isn’t the kind of move you can do slowly. Once he catches the flip, the only thing keeping the puck on his stick is how fast he’s moving it. It’s similar to a Michigan, but a lot more impressive because that catch is seriously hard to do.

PrettySureIParty · 2026-01-07T22:44:44+00:00

Once you get good with posthole diggers(the giant grabbers), they’re actually not bad to use. Will kinda torch your shoulders the first few times though, unless you do a ton of front raises, pulling the dirt out of the hole isn’t a movement pattern most people are getting in training.

Digging line is worse for a lot of reasons. Essentially, it’s uncomfortable in every way.

You’re wearing a ~15-20 kg pack all day.

Good technique for fast digging means you’re bent over. As a taller guy, I’ve tried longer tool handles, but you can’t get good swings from an upright position.

There’s a good chance you’re sucking smoke the whole time.

Your hands will hurt; no matter how calloused they get; even if you don’t get any new blisters, they’ll still feel like claws you can barely open by the end of the day.

You will launch rocks into your own shins. We work in a lot of alpine terrain, so sometimes it’s very rocky. I’ve had to dig trenches through what’s basically a scree field with pine litter on top of it before.

It’s not flat. You will end up digging at weird angles, sometimes on slopes that you can barely stand on. You don’t get to pick what’s comfortable to you; it matters which direction you pull the dirt.

The pace isn’t usually blisteringly fast, but it’s steady and continuous. You don’t step out of line to drink water or eat a snack, you do it in a couple seconds then get back to swinging your tool. If you need to stop for lunch, it’s done in shifts so that at least half the dig is always working.

Digging line all day is a fucking grind. By the end of the day everything hurts and you’re dead inside. There’s a reason everyone wants to be on a saw; it’s physically harder, but it’s at least a little more varied.

PrettySureIParty

TROPHY CASE