Project Management

This past Saturday I managed to get up to Squamish again for the 3rd time this winter/spring (happy spring 2010 by the way!) and have at some of my objectives for this year. It was awesome as usual and this time I had the treat of meeting up with Tim and Matt and having some climbing partners.

I warmed up listening to some fresh beats on my Ipod and then headed over to try Kingswing with 30 min. left until I was supposed to meet up with Matt. I had tried this problem for the first time 2 weekends prior and it had proven the victor. That was not to be repeated and after about half a dozen tries I finally held the "king swing" and thrutched through the final moves to call it a send. Nice! Incidentally, on our way back past this problem, Tim showed me how to do the low start which feeds into Mindbender Low and Kingswing Low; and although I didn't quite connect it in the two tries I had on it, it definitely feels possible and will be a great problem to tackle when I find myself on a solo mission.

After Tim crushed a V6, four V7's and a V9 as part of his warm up (not bad for a guy recovering from a broken leg and hasn't really been climbing much for a few months eh?), I managed to convince him to spot me on Defender of the Faith, my current project. The funny thing was, out of curiosity Tim asked me where I was starting the problem from and I told him I was doing it as the book described it. He informed me that was in fact incorrect and that I needed to start matched on the lowest hold, which in retrospect makes way more sense since that way you can start with both feet on the ground. At first I was dismayed since the problem was already near my limit and adding a move where you have to campus your foot onto the starting hold and adding another hand move to the start didn't really seem to improve my prospects of sending it!

However, it turns out that the first move didn't prove difficult and I'll be much happier now when I actually send it. My progress resulted in making it to the last move twice and falling short of sticking the final hold on the big throw. Although I didn't manage to send, I was really happy with the progress and it feels like it could go in perhaps another couple sessions with some good conditions. Here's a video clip of some guy sending it from the way I was originally starting it...you can see how it's a bit awkward to get on the problem this way.

We spent the rest of the day mucking around on some other problems Tim wanted to try so I just tagged along and got weaker and weaker as the day progressed...har har har. Tim seems to have the energy of about 10 guys and at the end of the day when everyone expressed that they were finished, Tim remarked "Well! It seems like I'm going to have to train to have less energy!" Har har har...sorry Timbo!

Sunday I got out for a quick road ride with Sizzle and his friend Kavi and unfortunately we got caught in the rain. It still felt great to get out though and spin my legs. My climbing membership runs out in 2 weeks now so I'm actually looking forward to doing some more riding outside, some finger strength specific workouts on my hangboard and maybe a few mid-week climbing sessions up in Squamish...look out!

In Italian lessons I've progressed to Unit 2 now, in which I'll learn to communicate about my house and city...fantastico!

Buona Notte