After reading Neely’s blog at trainingbeta on having a bad time in arco, it brought to mind a lot of the things I’ve discovered over the last ten years. Sometimes you just have to give up on appealing to the masses and their expectations and just climb because you love it. After being ridiculously sandbagged on what I would normally consider warm up grades, I resonated with her ‘just top rope it’ mentality. Getting wasted on a sharp sandbag just reduces your time and energy for more worthwhile things. Unfortunately, its not always apparent on which climbs are more worthwhile. Sometimes the information is out of date, maybe some (a lot) of holds have broken off, the weather is just not the best right now, is it wet/damp/moist(ugh).
For the first time in a few years, I’ve started this trip reasonably fitter than usual. I’m not my mid to late 40’s fit and I’m still hoping I can get back to that level, but finally, I didn’t get sick or overworked in the month or so leading up to our departure. I seem to have lost the ability to lose weight (such a contentious topic) so I started adding light weights to my harness in the month before we left. I started with 2x .5kg ankle weights onto my harness and each week I would add a kilo until I hit 3kg. Nothing huge and nothing to give me an injury. If I climbed something crimpy and fingery, I would take them off and let my fingers enjoy the sudden lightness. So, getting to Greece I was quite happy at how I was climbing. I felt great and reasonably strong… until I looked at the grades we were climbing. Grades are such a love/hate thing and yet, we seem to place so much of our climbing emphasis on them. Don’t get me wrong, I love it when I send a project especially at a harder grade. But it’s such a fleeting success. It's over so soon and you’re looking for the next fix for your addiction. As I’m getting older, I’m learning that sometimes, it’s just great that you can still climb no matter what the grade. As long as I can keep climbing something, I’m happy.
Except for sandbags… I really hate sandbags.
It’s not so much that you can’t do something at a certain ‘grade’. Its that sometimes you do just want to move on something. Warm up, get the flow, enjoy the moves. But sandbags steal that joy from you, and potentially cause injuries, taking away from that long future of climbing you’re aspiring to.
So, ignore the ego, and if it’s a sandbag, top rope it. Don’t injure yourself and keep climbing for a long, long time.
