Scaling that wall

Note to self: it’s never a good idea to eat tomato-based pasta with sausage and watch a war movie at the same time.

I love climbing, and I love traveling, but unless one takes a climbing vacation, the two don’t quite go hand in hand. After a month without climbing, it was somewhat frustrating to get back to the wall.

On Friday, I went to the outdoor wall with Jeff and Chuck. It was freezing out, and the combination of the cold, my tiredness and loss of muscle memory just killed my climbing. After three attempts, I was pretty much called it a night.

I went back to the wall again today – with no small amount of misgivings. To tell the truth, I was half tempted to just stay in at home, but I needed to feed my friend’s cats, and I’d already gotten a solid 11 hours of sleep the night before, so I had really no excuse to skip out on climbing. I was just not looking forward to struggling my way up the wall again, especially not when I knew that I could have easily climbed those same routes with no trouble at all a month ago.

Happily, I gritted my teeth, and got myself out there – and even stayed for a whole four hours, when I had promised myself to stick it for two hours. I was still having stamina issues, but Julian, Sandra and Tracy were really encouraging, and while I tired easily, I found that the hiatus hadn’t robbed me of my technical skills. New goal – get up to a 10b/c by year end.

Fingers crossed that I’ll be able to improve enough to nail those climbs I’d been working in Kentucky the last time I went down. If things work out (weather, studying, logistics), I should be back down at the end of the month. Woot.