Monday 27 July 2009

THE OTHER IRON ROAD

Goddammit I felt strong in the gym today!!! I'm psyched. Last week I felt good, but today I just kicked the shit out of those weights. Power power power is the way forward, the only way. It's also more fun to train.
Then, "Fame di stelle" was born last saturday at Amiata top. It kicked my ass. I got there thinking "Ok, I send it first try and then I'll dedicate myself to harder stuff". Well, I didn't do it on my first try, nor on my second, or third, or fourth. The crux move proved to be the long reach to the starting hold of "Mai dire male" which is a nasty two finger pocket (the name of the problem could be translated into "Never say it hurts") that you can't dyno into, you have to catch it just as precisely as it gets. Anyway, the problem is great in my opinion, requiring lots of feet movements, with the added spice that you climb 20 cm off the ground, so if you cut loose you hit the gound and you have to start it all over. It also has a very tight heel hook that could require some more stretching from Keith!!! Sadly it's not 8b+ like "Geko assis" but I wish it were.
I highly recommend you to read the novel wich I got the problem's name from, "Vol de nuit" by Saint-Exupery. It's beautiful, romantic and tragic.
I have to say that I've been quite lucky to do it after a while, just after finding a harder but more steady beta for the pocket move, beacause once again I had been very very amateurish, not in my climbing (I'm used to that...) but in my nourishment, and that's the second time in the last two weeks. I hadn't eaten enough, and when I got there to do the problem I was trembling, starving, I was feeling dizzy and I had already eaten all my food for the day. I found some cookies in my climbing bag, and despite the fact that I couldn't remember when I'd put them there, I devoured them and managed to stay alive. Stupidly enough, while on a sugar induced high, I decided I could level out the landing of another dangerous problem, so having watched the Netherlands leg of the European Strongman Championship the night before, I started moving big long fallen trees around to put them across the nasty gully that is under the overhang. Naturally, as I dropped the last piece of wood, I found myself trembling again, cold sweating, so I rushed down to the car and drove one km lower to the hut, to eat some cereal bars. When I got back to the boulders I was completely spent and had to left my project without a try. It will be hard, adding a proper sitter to another existing problem which is already hard.
I have to remember this very well, it could have spoiled my only weekly climbing day. It nearly did.
I found out that the amount of time spent training is inversely proportional to the time actually spent on ze rock.

1 comment:

richdraws@hotmail.com said...

I have got back into the Iron again, mostly clean and jerk, inc benches, rows to pull those shoulder blades back and my favourite the deadlift. Shooting for Malc Smith's poundages.