FINGERS

Tonight at the gym I had one of the best sessions of the last weeks. I didn’t even put my shoes on. After many weeks I got back into some fingerboarding. Why? Because The Guru said so. You always follow what The Guru says. Always. Anyway, after a gentle and long warm up, I tried to figure out the right way to test my fingers deeply without deeply detaching my injured shoulder (I’m going to the phisio tomotrrow). I found out that even in this simple game the right technique is essential: I need to have my body perfectly under the hold, to be in balance and not to have any other strain than the one on the fingers. Then, at that moment, I try to pull the hold down as to one arm it. Despite all this demonstration of technique and style, the exercise proved to be a bit too dangerous for my shoulder, so I moved under the magic crimps that I also put on The Mother of All Fingerboards, that are pictured above. I had seldom tried to hang those holds (by the way, they were made as foot holds), but to no avail. Bad skin, humidity and something else didn’t allow my finger to stay where my mind wanted. Today, the gym was freezing cold, as usual, but my skin was far better than lately (I’ve started to use less chalk and to take longer rests) and I found myself weightless. When I was living at the sea I had briefly tested myself on those holds, with a PB of 8 seconds, as Tom and Rich surely will remember, and my few tries as of late were close to that (to be honest under that). Well, my best two efforts today have been 19,8 and 21,7 seconds. Big numbers. I am the greatest.

Then, Cresciano. I have learnt a lot from my infamous weekend in Varazze. I don’t think it’s casual that my climbing days after that have been relaxed and generally laid back. Ok, this is largely due to my injury, but I feel it. I started trying to keep a very low profile, to be humble, with my feet firmly planted on the ground. Then, I unleash everything I have as I leave Mother Earth. Anyway, I went to Cresciano just to exchange the first fists with “Frank’s Wild Years”, one of my ticks for this year, very very high in my priority list. Everything else was thrown away. Ok, so I tried it for just half an hour, in bad conditions, with melting snow everywhere, holds included, but worked my way into it. I found out where exactly to hold the pinch (it makes a lot of difference, as I should have learnt by myself), where to pass my right knee to take off the left heel hook, where to heel hook with the right. I still have to decide which one of the smears to use for the crux moves, the match on the pinch and the dyno to the good edge (was that static to that jug?). I am short, as some of you may know, so I’m very stretched out if I use the same foothold as everyone else (the one further apart), but the closer one (the one just left of where you paste your right shoe to take the left heel off) maybe is a bit too close. Anyway I will sort this out. Later that day I tried “Hannibal Lechter” that is very nice but a little bit too similar to a route: no really hard moves but a lot of them, and also some nasty slaps to pointy holds: one of them obviously, cut a hole in my middle finger dammit. All in all a very nice problem and a very good day. With these small successes in the bag, the following day, with very poor conditions, I tried “La Pioche” and its strangely hard first move, that felt anyway doable. Then I crushed it from one move into it. Twice. The topout is still tricky but I think I was using the wrong foot hold. Same impression as for “Hannibal”, one stopper move and many more easier ones. Too many perhaps, so many that they could easily spoil the rest of a climbing day for my current stamina standards. At the end of the afternoon I tried the famous slopey 7b traverse nearly doing it (just kept sliding off) and then a nice 7c small arête that’s near “Voci dalla cantina”. I think I can do it and I really want to because I really liked it, short and powerful.
Ok, so that’s all, climbing wise. Seeya.