A few weeks ago, after spending eight hours doing homework on a Saturday, I decided I needed to take myself out to Gate's Pass and get grounded in the real world of rocks and snakes and cacti again. Sometime during the summer, after an initial surge of hard climbing days, I lost the climbing plot, and stopped getting out.
Dustin and Joe climbed harder than ever this summer, and I watched an embarrassing amount of Dual Survival and Man, Woman, Wild. So, it was special and refreshing to load up the dog and crash pad in my old truck and head to the hills for a solo sesh.
On the trail between my old truck and the boulders the dog caught a whiff of something and shot off between the saguaros after it. My dog moves pretty quick, but whatever she was onto moved even faster. From a fifty yards back I saw a streak of black and the shock-green limbs of a palo verde tree start to dance. The dog circled the base of the tree, sniffed once and then trotted off to gnaw on the dusty bone of something old and dead.
I took a few pictures.
The snake seemed like a good sign. Those kinds of snakes eat the rattlesnakes that I'm not convinced my dog has the wits to avoid. And it was weird and strangely beautiful up there waving in the breeze.
I cranked out a handful of easy problems at the upper boulders. Thinking that if I was an Aztec I would set up a city here, and cram the cut-out hearts of my sacrifices into huecos at the tops of all the boulders instead of building a temple.
The holds felt warm and happy in my hands. Except for the dog, I had the place to myself, as I almost always do, and it was good. Instead of cutting the hearts out of captured enemies I resolved to make time to climb more and to train more in order to be strong to be motivated to climb more and climb harder.
I resolve to do these things about twice annually, but since then I've been in the gym three times and have climbed at the U of A's Rec Center at least that many times.
It's a start.
Yesterday I went to the gym with Paco and tossed off six routes (5.7, 5.8, 5.9. 5.10a and 2 x 5.10b) and finished up with five laps on four other routes from 5.6 to 5.9. I plan to do something similar next Thursday but perhaps also trying to extend the upper-end range of difficulty to 5.10c and/or .10d. Paco agreed when I offered up the idea of loosely following Eric Horst's 10-week training cycle from his book How to Climb 5.12. The Horst cycle starts with four weeks of endurance training. As a way of increasing both the amount of time I spend with this blog and the amount of time I spend training for climbing I'm aiming to complete Horst's 10-week cycle with at least 10 accompanying posts documenting my progression.
I'm looking for training tips, too-- on motivation, on training for endurance, on training for finger strength, and on making time to train. Anybody who wants to share: throw me some tips in the comments section of this post.
Where's your Tenochtitlan?
Hangboard pyramids! (4 seconds, 6 seconds, 8 seconds, 10 seconds, 8 seconds, 6 seconds 4 seconds)Rest 5 seconds between each hang and alternate holds. It'll blow your fingers away, just like it did yesterday. Sad that you have give yourself your own training tips. Maybe you should get some more followers.
ReplyDeleteIs that new picture your "After" picture once you are done with all this training? Lofty goal, my friend.
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