Friday 10 July 2009

WTF?

I had an excellent session at the gym today.
Why? I really don't know. There was nothing different from other sessions that went bad, I had worked today, my back was a bit achey, in the gym it was 29° and 60% humidity, but somehow I felt good.
I was scheduled to do the second fingerboard session of this new cycle, but it lasted short, because I felt the urge to climb. I just did some one arm deadhangs, and a couple of one armers, then I put my shoes on.
One problem with a nasty move that I had never
done saw me sticking the move three times in a row and proceeding at full speed ahead. One other under the 60° wall (my home away from home) gave me a great sensation of control of my body and that made me happy again, excellent body tension (well, excellent for me at least), precise movements.
So the first week is over, two weights sessions and two fingerboarding sessions. I'm tired, but less tired than at the beginning of the week: for the first session of weights I chose to play it safe, with good volume and many reps to have some muscle conditioning, but alot of excercises and 4 sets of 12 moves each rewarded me with a full 48
hours of DOMS. It felt much better yesterday, even if a bit tired at the lat machine, which I am using with one arm, with a handle.
Anyway, tomorrow it seems I'm going bouldering. My friends went to taste Dolomites for the first time in the summer (crazy fucking rainy summer so far up there), but I didn't feel like going 100%. Yesterday it had rained again, so the boulders are going to be wet, and I didn't want to just do long routes, plus the day my girlfriend will graduate is rapidly approaching and her final thesis is being finished, so I chose to go a little bit closer.
The goal of the weekend is to climb "Cogli l'attimo", a problem at Lagoni area, put up by power monster Caminati hims
elf and graded 7c. Ah ah, 7c my ass.
This problem is tricky. It's supposed to be a sitter, but if I sit start I can't reach any foothold (it's a roof), so last year I tried it and almost did it starting from the pads: Michele told me the sequence, so I know that it's definitely ok to start like that, a sort of crouching start, but I would like to do a proper sitter tomorrow, even if I know it will be excruciatingly, horribly, annoyingly hard. I will hate it.
You are under a roof, you have a one tip downfacing hold with a razor lip. If you crouch start, you throw your right foot far right, to toe hook the arete of the roof, and you paste your left fo
ot under the roof, on the softest footholds ever found. They break as you brush them (damn sanstone!). So, from this very uncomfy position, you have to pull really hard (but not so hard that you cut loose) to get a horrible undercling, then you keep yourself tight and go for the arete, which happens to be quite slopey, you switch toe for heel hook, you brace yourself and then you dyno with your right hand to the goodish bit, then to the jug. Four moves in total, really really brutal.
To explain how hard it felt to me last year, I can only tell you that I was worried for my right bicep to explode when holding the arete (touching wood) so strenuous a move it was.

So tomorrow I want to sit start this nightmare, and that means just pulling footless on the edge and try to grab the arete with your right foot, then do all the above.
Finally, my thoughts today went to the problem up at Città dei Sassi I wrote about past november (150 days until June), and to how much I want to do it.


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