‘Tis the Season… (aka Bragging and Planning)

…for southeastern bouldering!

I’ve often called bouldering the art of frustration. Takes a lot of work and a lot of failed tries for me to send a new problem, especially when it is at a new grade or a grade I am just breaking into. All boulderers have their own reason why they put up with the struggle. For me, I put up with it because of how awesome it is to stick a new move, to link a new sequence, and of course to send. (And other reasons not enumerated here). But I also have another (no so) secret reason… it is the hope, the hope that one day I won’t have a mediocre or good session, that one day I will have a veritable crushfest. I also hope that I am not the only climber that holds this ridiculous dream. But long story short: yesterday, for the first time in my bouldering career, I had one of those days. It was great to see how much I have progressed from the last time I bouldered at Rumbling Bald.

Mini-post: Too much exciting stuff to not update

You could claim that I am just ripping stories off of climbingnarc, where they have been conveniently compiled for all climbers to see in one place. But I just found several things I liked so much I had to re-post.

1) Jamie Emerson's favorite book is Cormac McCarthy's Blood Meridian or at least that is what he says in an interview with Caroline Treadway. This makes me really excited because Blood Meridian is the text I am writing my senior paper on and it is a mind-blowing book. If you ever feel like diving into the deep end of heavy and cerebral contemporary literature, read it. Also, the rest of the interview is interesting read it too.

2) Without getting too personal or sharing too much, my weight and the food I consume are two things I obsess over too much. In the newest Urban Climber Angie Payne talks a little bit about her relationship with weight and how hard it can be to make 'good' food decisions when as a female climber you realize it is easier to pull on crimps when you weigh less. Although I am a long way from being Angie Payne, this statement clicked with me. In the past two years I have been climbing, I have both lost weight and improved my climbing tremendously. When I do weighted pull ups or other weighted exercises I think, "How the hell did I ever climb anything when I weighted 10 pounds more than I do now?" And then I go down the rabbit hole, I think to myself, If I only weighted 5 pounds less I could be so much better at climbing. So I try, I eat less, I actually run, and I climb better for a few sessions. And then I am hungry, tired and grumpy, so I scarf down some sort of greasy crap and get mad at myself.

Currently, I am working hard to stop this cycle. Today I found this post on Allie Rainey's blog that both reminds me as a climber I am not alone in my weight stress and also makes me realize that it is training, not 5 less pounds that is going to help me sent.

Which gets me to my final point, TRAINING! I have never really trained before, but I feel like I need to start being more deliberate about how I use my time in the gym in order not to plateau. I'm psyched, now I just need to do it!

An aimless post with random links aka 3 reasons climbing is awesome

Three Reasons climbing is awesome:

1) This past weekend was the one, the only, the first installment of the Triple Crown Bouldering Competition, HOUND EARS! But I wasn't there, this past weekend I went to the Obed and continued in my quest to try to climb 5.12. Sadly, all that I sent this weekend was the warm up...  but progress was made on both of my current projects!


Here is a video of a young boy crushing one of the climbs I have been working on. I don't know the kid or the guy who filmed it, but it is a cool video and is a good reminder that (pretty much) no matter how hard you climb, somewhere there is a thirteen fourteen fifteen year old climbing your latest project. Like I said, climbing is awesome.

2) There is an almost endless possibility for making up words: dyno, aggro, sloper, ringlock... the list is (almost) infinite.

A new word was added to my climbing lexicon this weekend-- PORK WHIPPER. You may say, "Wait! That is two words, one of which is a preexisting climbing word." To which I would reply, "You're right, shut up." That sticky point bypassed, I return to the matter at hand: PORK WHIPPER. I don't need to tell you what it is, because it is a term best defined for oneself. One day you will fall off a rock  and realize you have just taken a Pork Whipper, bask in the porky goodness.

3) There is an almost endless possibility for making up words: dyno, aggro, sloper, ringlock... the list is (almost) infinite amount of climbing media out there on the internet. This video from Switzerland is rad. Do yourself a favor and watch it (twice).

This post is mediocre at best; I felt bad about not updating, but now I want to go to the climbing gym.