Monday 11 May 2009

SUPER MARIO!

Well, two hours and maybe some more to get to the Amiata Top are well worth, if every time I go there I have such fun. I really don't know, maybe it's the cool air, maybe the amount of new lines to be cleaned, or maybe it's something else, but it's just great.
Yesterday Fabio was there for the first time, so I gave him the full tour, doing the usual problems with a few new eliminates, like the new established "Super Mario", which is a left hand variation of "Il motorino di Mario". It's a cool little problem, and a deep lock. Going dynamic should give a different idea of the difficulty of the problem, as a bit more of reach should. Anyway if you're curious come here and do it, I like to go static lately, when I can.
After a couple of hours playing around I rested for a while, and then got very psyched to give another go to "Il traverso del cinghiale" while Fabio was trying the short version, so I set off and crushed it with terribly cold hands: the pain that I experienced after the send, was something that will surely remind me to warm up my fingers before a go, after a long rest.
At this moment I was already a bit tired, the previous day's session in the gym was starting to make its presence felt, but after some more rest and alot of chocolate I put the pads under my other project, the one where I still had not done a single move. It felt great, I managed to find a new sequence for the last move (3rd), and crushed it twice in a row. Then I tried the second move which is absolutely hard in the quintessential sense of it, and then I tried the start. Again I fully understood the inner meaning of the world "hard" but, again in a single moment where all the power of the mountain concentrated into myslef and every other form of energy was left down, as after a nuclear blast, I managed to leave the ground, to set my two feet on the rock and to try and execute the move. S.U.C.C.E.S.S.
This is a great great encouragement. I hope the holds won't break (small flakes under a roof) because the moves are absolutely brilliant.
Somehow this project came down from the world of the impossible into the world of the "impossible that one day I could do" (thank you Grimer).
I am so psyched that I really want to go and train today, but I won't. The finger is fine after yesterday, and so it must stay, so no bullshit gym today.
I am at the point at which I feel improvements at every session on rock. Probably I am close to my training potential of the moment, so I think that every small gain that I have indoors have a much bigger spin effect on the rock, where I can't climb that much. While it's ever more difficult to obtain such gains, their reward on rock is enormous and well worth the fatigue.
What else?
Oh, Elba island. Going there next weekend until end of may. Today I had a chat with one other teacher who spends there the entire summer (lucky bastard), and she told me that it's very beautiful, that if I like I can teach my classes outside, in the garden, and that in the afternoon, when I'm finished teaching I can do whatever I want "while the students chill out in the swimming pool".
Whatever I want...
Like chilling out in the swimming pool, for instance.
Enjoy Fabio on "Dolce e caffè" and myself on "Super Mario".


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