No Flex Zone

 

 

What an amazing season it has been so far.  The temps have been outstanding, we have had more good weather windows for sending than I can count on both hands, psyche has been high, and even the rock has been mostly dry or dryish.  But, as with all long drawn out struggles, sometimes you have to admit defeat (temporarily) and wait for an even better time to strike.

Last week I took about 7 days off from climbing (which is a lie, I actually climbed one day out of seven but it was in horrible conditions, the first all season).  I ate a ton of good food, drank a pretty decent amount of delicious beer, and poured sugar down my throat in the form of ice cream, gelato, doughnuts, cookies, and those little 'fun' size milky ways.  Oh man, it was a regular fat guy pig out marathon.  I loved it.  I took some time off from climbing not due to an injury, or because of bad conditions, or emotional problems; what I needed was just a break from the routine.  Climbing is and will always be a grand adventure packed with every kind of emotion I always hope to experience for the rest of my life, it is for lack of a better word what I love to do.  Projecting within climbing is a different beast.  And I had found myself with my head in that beasts jaws too many times in the past months struggling to keep them from closing around my cranium.  Wake up - eat breakfast - drive to the crag - hike to the crag - warm up - project - project - project - hike to the car - drive home - repeat.  And during the weekdays it could be even more monotonous when you throw a highly rehearsed 8 hours of cornea shredding desk jockeying on top of training and watching what I eat.  Ugh.

 

So it came as no surprise when my psych hit the floor, then sunk through the floor in an oozing gelatinous translucent blob only to come to rest on the cold cement of the basement, festering and steaming.  In the middle of an intense projecting season you need something to keep you going and if you don't get that 'something' it's very easy to just fall off your horse midway through a call to arms.  It can be even more daunting, then, to feel at the top of your game and still not feel as though it's good enough.  So I didn't exactly take my ball and go home, instead I just heard the siren song of a different game and decided to follow the tune. 

 

After a nice little hiatus from training/projecting/climbing I found myself at the tail end of this pseudo vacation craving the movement of it all.  It filled my veins and my mind and I got that lovely itch again to get back into the gym and back on the rock.  There is really nothing better than feeling that renewed energy to get after it.  I'm spending the next five weeks trying to get realigned with some goals I set for the beginning of the season in hopes of executing those goals when Fall starts.  The temps are looking a little heinous this week but it doesn't matter.  I've still got some tricks up my sleeve and hopefully by training in a humid gym on highly chalked holds I will emerge from this sticky sweaty womb as a mutant ready to send something hard.

All photo credits belong to: https://www.instagram.com/tarakerzhner/