Saturday, February 11, 2012

Day Dreamer

 A nice day at fort rock, Blackheath.
This definitely is not my most exciting post I have ever submitted, but to be entirely honest I haven't really done anything worth blogging about. So I'll keep it short and sweet! Since Christmas I have been trying to be a little more disciplined and actually try and do some slightly more "structured" training. Prior to New Year I was spending a bit of time at the Underworld with Benjamin, keen for an awesome line called Hashish(32). It Basically links the crux of two awesome routes into one, via a really cool roof traverse. Pumpy with a technical crux. I was pretty psyched until I injured my knee trying a little too hard on one of the moves, this is not good considering the route has 5 heel toe moves leading up to the crux. In the end there was no question about it, any heel toe position was excruciating. Unfortunately I wont be climbing this route for a while. Quite frustrating, but it will heal and hopefully by then I will be strong enough to climb the route with ease.
This little set back also gave me the opportunity to get back to a route called Mechanical Animals(33) at Boronia Pt. No heel toes in this sucker, so I didn't have any excuses! Despite conditions being rather average, I think I managed some pretty good progress on this line. It took me probably 3 days of work before I could do the crux sequence, and then I overlapped the route on a couple of occasions. It went from feeling totally impossible to very doable, in a short period which is exciting. Since then we have had 3 weeks of crazy weather, pretty well rain on most days.
Rogue Echidna joining the action at Boronia 
Anyway for the past 3 or 4 weeks I have just been training quite a lot at the BBC, and hang boarding at home. It has worked out rather well, because it allows me to work more and train harder. I think a solid block of training over summer is not a bad thing, especially when the conditions are terrible. I really enjoy running at the moment especially in the mountains(when its not raining). I did a lot of cross country running as a kid and then gave it away for probably 8 years. I seem to have forgotten how good running makes me feel, its awesome.
Unfortunately Larger than life is larger than my quickdraw collection!
This time of year is once again very frustrating. Do I persevere with the bad conditions and risk not getting anywhere on a project....or just cut my loses and train solid for the remainder of summer. I made the mistake last year of throwing myself at routes that were at my limit in 99% humidity and although it was fun, I think a lot of it was a big waste of time and could have been better spent training. I keep on dreaming of rocking up to the cliff on a beautiful cold autumn day with a new level of strength. Crushing that crux that demoralised me last season and sending that project in 3 shots instead of 3 months. I think it is probably this thought alone that drives me to train harder. I Can't wait to climb these routes!!

 Jammin with Danny & Ben at Waragil
That pretty briefly sums up the past month. I look forward to posting some slightly more exciting blogs very soon. This year is going to be awesome! Thanks for reading my blog :-)