Lucky 3

Three things were awesome about today...

No. 1

I had an amazing session at the climbing gym after work today. I nailed all the problems I had tried on Wednesday that had shut me down so that was cool. The I set to work on a new V9 on the whale belly wall that Ryan Olson set and this thing is amazing! I typically don't get all that excited about climbing indoors and generally see it as a means to an end given the climate we live in; however, Ryan's genius shines bright with this problem. I unhesitatingly (is that a word?) give it the title of 'The best indoor problem I have ever tried'. Hands down. I have a lot of respect for good route setters because I think that it would be a difficult task to continuously come up with new, interesting material to present to people. This coup de gras starts with no less than a double toe hook and you climb your hands along a fully horizontal roof until your hand foot matched on the starting foot hold. Atthis point you engage in a barbaric sequence that threatens to tear you right shoulder apart, right before smashing your core with a 6 lb sledgehammer. Then it gets hard; you have to lock off a crappy crimp, thrutch up to a better crimp, launch yourself sideways to snatch the final edge, bunch up on the high foot and explode to the lip madly pawing the air and begging to make contact with the finishing hold. Awesome! I fell with 3 moves to go on my final and best burn of the night which was way more than I expected when I first tried the moves so that was cool.

No. 2

I'm getting psyched on doing some road racing again this season...partly because I can feel I have piss poor cradiovascular conditioning, partly because I can feel my legs are super weak, and partly because road racing is an awesome form of bike racing. I realized last year that I enjoy road racing much more than XC mtb racing, mainly due to the higher degree of strategy involved with road racing. Also I've been watching a DVD called Legends of the Tour that highlights the likes of Merckx, Armtsrong, Hinault, Anquetil and so on. Tomorrow morning if it's not raining I'm going to try and get out for an early road ride to kickstart my base miles training...

No. 3

I bought Italian language lessons today by Living Languages from Chapters at lunch and I'm super excited to dig into them. I think Italian is far and away the nicest sounding language and I think the culture is really cool so that has got me inspired to try my hand at learning the language of the champion lovers...sono l'amonte di campione!

Ciao!