monday night heights

last week was a high gravity week at the gym. every problem was a challenge; every move felt like a deadpoint. taking the weekend off is usually enough to solve that. of course, i went climbing on saturday with rob & brad. weather was nasty, so we went out to the other gym in sterling. great bouldering. rob and i messed around mostly; brad was intrigued/fascinated/slightly overwhelmed by the bouldering scene. remembering back to my first few trips to the gym, i can recall the acrophobia kicking in about five feet off the deck. brad was no different, though he did a pretty good job running down a few V1s on his first plastic outing.

this week, high gravity weighing heavy on my mind. ha ha, get it. weighing. heavy. gravity. anyhow...

i decided on monday to rope up rather than be a boulder rat. i spotted a belay partner waiting for the auto-belay. i'd climbed with her before. she's good people and climbs about the same as i do on rope, maybe harder if only because of endurance. she wanted to get on the new routes, foremost a 5.11. a slopey, pinchy, sustained route. the crux was about halfway up. i rocked through that and ran out of steam soon thereafter. no endurance. i put all the moves together, came down flash pumped, and flailed on the next route too. pockety 5.10 does not equate to easier in my book, especially when my forearms were already screaming.

here it is, two days later, my forearms are still fatigued; yet, i'll probably tie some knots and see if i can't tick the redpoints on those two pretty sweet routes first thing tonight. maybe i ought to warm up this time though...