ON OUR TIMES AND AGE

Hello motherfuckers. When I last wrote on here, I couldn't imagine that a far worse shitstorm than another broken meniscus was about to hit the fan. And I won't spend another word on this matter. Anyway, luckily I had sorted myself out with a decent home gym over the years, so the first lockdown was spent working from home and training, with my knee surgery obviously postponed. I had set myself the goal of training everyday, and so I did for the 61 straight days in which Italy was locked. I came out two kilos heavier at 6,2 % body fat. The highlight of this process was nearly completing my 30 moves board project, falling off with only two moves to the top. Then came the surgery, that went very well, but left again my knee quite tender and resulted in a very undesired switch between kilos of muscle and kilos of fat, courtesy of large amounts of food and wine. Autumn came and with it another lockdown. I started struggling for climbing motivation and started training again for the project, but to no avail despite some good progress. I could always climb it in two overlapping halves with minimal rests in between, but the magic never happened. On the other hand, I kept moving lots of iron. The days and weeks kept coming and going always the same, with a monk life made of work and training, but with less joy than usual and no particular progress. I didn't touch the board for weeks and weeks and I did very little finger training. When I started back, I found out - surprise surprise - that I was quite below par. At that point reality struck me: my idea of a continuous progress over the years, at 49 years old, was simply delusional. Hello motherfucker. Maintaining is gaining they say... I sincerely don't know how it happened, but I went back to the board. At first it's been very hard to keep getting back to it. I was used to feel in a certain way while climbing, and I had to let the thought that those sensations were gone forever sink in. Or so I thought. My fingers are still averagely strong I think: I last tested the Lattice Edge at around + 2/4 kilos consistently, and I have to take into account that I am more or less four kilos heavier than a few years ago. I can hang the Lattice Edge back3 two armed at + 30 kilos. On the board, I basically had to re-learn how to climb, and I realized how well I used to use my feet and legs on it: I was really a very good climber on that board. I learnt that I was playing it too prudently and I started pushing things a bit more, legs wise. I also started to plan my sessions according to my motorcycle riding: board climbing and leather gloves don't go along very well. Session after session I could see some little improvement, and I reckon I had the good idea of not going back on previous projects: without false modesty, some of them - that I did or nearly did - were simply ridiculous. I set myself the goal of setting lots of new problems, and I stuck to this idea: over the last few weeks I've done a dozen of new problems or so, while before I would set a couple of hard problem and work them into submission for weeks or months or even years. Obviously, being myself after all, I got quickly sucked into setting hard things that I could not climb, and there I was again, stuck in project mode. I have to admit that, during the very few occasions in which I climbed with a friend, it's been very, very hard to watch how stronger than me they are now: they've climbed things that I can't do, and it's very, very hard to digest. But. There's always a but. The other day, I had one of those sessions. I was physically ready, and mentally even more so. I climbed three problems that were feeling very far away the week before, and I went out with my girlfriend to celebrate with a few Vodka Martinis. The magic had happened again, both in terms of climbing something and in terms, in advance, of setting something that was right at this side of the limit. I have to stick with this. I understood - after a few years - that I can keep my pleasure in hard climbing, or climbing at my limit, playing with the concepts of "hard" and "limit". Every session is different, every session had its hard and its limit. I have to stay on that line. And the dream goes on, I am still the strongest motherfucker of them all. Ceteris paribus, innit.