Climbing Character series #4
Next up in our Climbing Character series is the Buff Boulderer, based on Dr. Favia Dubyk.
I had first heard of Favia because of her very active instagram account, @FelineFavia, where she posts a ton of climbing training tips and workouts. “I love the training part of Climbing. If there was a competition that was just hangboarding, I would do it,” she said with a laugh. As a past American Ninja Warrior, Favia was an obvious inspiration for the Buff Boulderer. But you’ll see that some of her most outstanding accomplishments aren’t just feats of physical strength— it’s also her tenacity, her fighting spirit, and the ability to believe that she can overcome life’s challenges.
Favia got into climbing on a bit of a whim—when she was starting grad school at Columbia, she went to a student activity fair and she stopped at the climbing gym’s table. Coaxed by her roommate, they both signed up for memberships but their attendance waned as they found other things in the city to stay busy with. Nearing the end of her time at Columbia, Favia realized she had been paying for the gym membership all this time and had barely taken advantage of it. “I calculated how many times I had to go to make the membership worth it,” Favia explained, and started hitting the gym more regularly. Once she got into a regular schedule, she fell in love with climbing.
She took her newfound passion with her to med school in Cleveland, where she found a crew of equally-enthusiastic fellow climbers. Favia joined them on the 4-hour drive to Cooper’s Rock nearly every weekend, (quite a feat for a med school student) and occasionally sprung for the 7-hour drive to Red River Gorge. But about halfway into med school, Favia started having trouble breathing. Thinking it was just an infection or minor issue, she went to the Cleveland Clinic for tests, which resulted in a grave diagnosis: it was cancer. Favia said, “I was trying to stay strong and not cry, but I couldn’t hold it in any longer. [My doctor] proceeded to give me a pep talk that I still remember to this day. She said that if I was climbing and going to medical school with such a huge mass (11 cm) in my chest, that I had enough strength to beat this. I was almost excited to start this battle. Unfortunately, it would be much more than a single battle, it would be a life long war.”
Favia explained that Climbing became her reason for fighting, pushing through all the pain, undergoing chemo, and putting everything else in her life on hold. She had been an athlete all her life and watched her body wither away as she underwent round after round of chemo, losing her strength, independence, and identity. After her very last round of chemo, she started down the road of physical recovery so she could build enough strength to start climbing again. She latched onto climbing training plans, filling spreadsheets with her workouts and tracking her progress. Her husband Brian built her a home wall so she could maintain training as she finished med school.
Photo courtesy of Favia Dubyk
After graduating from Med School, she moved to Albuquerque and was on cloud 9 being close to so much good climbing. She explained that climbing gives her a way to deal with the harshness of medicine—she can clear her mind and just focus on what’s directly in front her. And after working in pathology for 5 years, she’s decided to shift her professional focus to something more fulfilling. “After nearly dying, you realize you can’t put happiness on the back burner.” Favia is opening her own practice, which is a pathology education clinic: “Clients bring their lab reports to me to explain what the results mean and how the results were determined. I started it because as a person diagnosed with cancer, you have to blindly trust the diagnosis that comes from the pathologist, a doctor you've most likely never heard of. If patient's understood how pathologists came up with the diagnosis, they will be better informed and empowered to make better medical decisions.” This change allows Favia to set her own schedule and open up more time for climbing, and gives her more patient interaction.
It’s obvious from Favia’s commitment to training and education that she is a goal-setter, constantly in pursuit of the next big thing. “I’m more motivated by huge goals than small ones.” She explained that when you have a huge goal that you know will take you 5-10 years to accomplish, you don’t get upset after a lackluster climbing season or an injury. You work under the assumption that you’ll achieve it eventually, but it will take time. The huge goals help her stay psyched, ticking off a series of small goals that are building blocks leading to a much more ambitious effort. Her current project? Leading on gear and learning how to crack climb!
Dr. Favia Dubyk lives in New Mexico with her husband Brian, her dog Hans, and 5 cats. Her favorite place to climb is Hueco Tanks because of all the roof bouldering. You can follow her on instagram @FelineFavia.