What We Tell Ourselves
As soon as I
relinquish my unyielding grip on outcome and success I end up getting what I want. Certainly not an intuitive practice. Climbing is not just a physical game, we all
know this. Yet, we spend so much time in
the gym beating our heads against the wall and torturing ourselves over
hangboards, campusboards, circuitboards, and every other kind of board you can
think of (until you’re actually bored) in the hopes of becoming stronger than
our projects. As if all it takes to get
to the next level is strong fingers?!
What an insult to this beautiful game we play. Climbing, in fact, is the king of games. It combines danger, finesse, raw power, cunning,
logistics, intelligence, foresight, a high pain tolerance, obsession,
masochism, and a balance between peak mental readiness and ultimate physical performance. To play this game well you have to let it
pervade your life, your diet, your social choices, your time commitments, your
geographic location, and your ability to sacrifice money/time/relationships/and
ego. Climbing is all encompassing and
defining, when you embrace it and make it a passion you can truly understand
something deeper about yourself and ultimately the world in a purely holistic sense. I know how easy it is to dispense euphoric
hyperboles post triumph but I would still feel the same way even if I hadn’t
sent this season’s project (Porn Star at Little si) just a day ago on August 9th,
2016.
Riddled with
guilt for calling in sick (when I clearly wasn’t) I lay in bed counting the
minutes until it was time to go. I
followed all of my usual ‘get ready to climb’ rituals, ate the same breakfast
burrito from PCC market, drank the same Synergy Kombucha, and ate
the same pint of blue berry’s. I already
felt this divine sense of failure growing in me. I stood in my boxers staring out the skylight
in my room, watching the low lying clouds cluster around some unknown peak to
the east and gave up all expectation. I
didn’t feel any stronger than the day before, I didn’t come to some eye-opening
life-changing realization the night before, and now I was regretting missing
work to give myself over to the process of this project. I started to develop some weird feeling of
animosity towards the route and the decisions it had made me make. It was too late anyway, so I exhaled a deep
sigh and with it my expectation of sending.
I climbed
into my car and felt pain in my shoulder, a soreness that hadn’t been there the
day before when I was resting and getting ready for another round. Meh, just another reason why today isn’t the
day. I drove lethargically east heading to the crag, not really
feeling the playlist I had selected, not really thinking about...anything. I felt kind of tired honestly, and when I did
make it to the trail head I felt hungry and ready for a nap. I hiked up without music, not really paying attention
to any one detail of the trail, a trail I have hiked too many times, and will
continue to hike too many times into the unforeseeable future.
I arrived
pouring sweat and again thought ‘it’s manky and humid, not the day for sending’
and let my back pack slump off my sore shoulder.
While I
climbed I went from feeling defeated and tired to feeling energized and alive. I crouched onto one foot mid crux and
casually reached up to the credit card crimp on my warm up of Flatliner. I fumbled the next move sticking a shallow undercling with two fingers and
tried to readjust. I fell. But I felt amazing. I lowered to the ground and was buzzing, I
felt the warmth of some kind of strange energy encompassing and saturating my
entire body. I
no longer felt tired or disengaged.
My first go
of the day was high energy and a bit jittery.
It’s as if the rock itself was giving off some kind of life sustaining
energy that magically propelled me upwards.
I greased right off the two slopey opposing sidepulls that define the
crux of Porn Star feeling strong but nervous as well. I’m used to it, this isn’t going to happen
today. I slumped in my harness for a
quick minute and then sailed the last boulder problem to the top, a dance (or
ritual) I had grown far too accustomed to engaging in. Nothing is going to change, I’ll just have to
wait for those crispy/sticky Fall sending temps. I had given up, or I had given myself permission
to give up, which was okay because it was a ‘lose a battle to win a war’ type of
give up.
It was a
cloudy Tuesday afternoon in August. Most
of the climbers at the crag that day were donning puffy jackets or pull overs,
while the actual climbing demanded shorts and no shirts the waiting room
required slightly more insulation. The
rock was cold, there was no breeze, and it was busy. Much busier than I had thought it would be on
a weekday. I liked it this way. I began climbing and it didn’t feel like
anyone cared. I was able to fall into my
own rhythm. I felt pumped at the top of
Aborigine (sheesh), and then even more pumped after the short little sequence of
Techno just before branching left into the start of Porn Star. I did the initial boulder problem and got to the
enormous jug rest. I looked up at the sea
of draws hanging listlessly. My inner
dialogue went something like this: “You have no chance. This is just another one hang, just do me a
favor? When you get to the crux just try
hard this time okay? You don’t have to
send but at least try hard! Just try to
get a little farther than your last couple of burns. It’s okay if you don’t send, you won’t send
anyways, you’re too pumped, you’ve felt so much better than this on other burns
and you didn’t send, this is definitely not the send burn.”
Not exactly
motivational, but it’s really what was going through my head. I launched into the meat of the climb. I was a little more pumped than usual but I
was also a little more relaxed. I
reached the apex of the climb, a small rest before one last boulder
problem. I grabbed a brick shaped
slpoper and instead of over-gripping I just let my hand relax as it stuck to
the hold without budging. I grabbed an
incut crimp and shook my other hand out.
I swapped a couple of times and then said “fuck it” and executed my
sequence. Instead of feeling like everything
had to be perfect, instead of giving up because I stuck the first hold wrong or
I didn’t like how my foot felt on this tiny sloping jib of a foot hold, I just
climbed and continued to climb. I
perched on the slopey brick shaped hold from the rest and flagged perfectly,
reaching up effortlessly for a small crimp, I felt so good I shook out my right
hand before switching it to an undercling.
I wasn’t over-gripping myself off the climb! I made an across the body move with my left
hand and rolled casually into the pocket just beneath the jug. I grabbed a good right hand crimp, adjusted
to a better grip in the pocket, jacked my foot up on a slim foot hold and reached
out to the finish jug, finally breaking my casual defeatist attitude with a
yell that no doubt grabbed everyone’s attention.
What
happened next is hard to write about. I
kind of monkey chugged up the easy 15ft to the anchors and had a somewhat out
of body experience when I actually clipped the rope through the anchors.
I began
working this route back in October of 2015.
I spent a couple weekends on it figuring out the moves and making some
links. I came back to it at the end of
April in 2016 and worked on it pretty heavily until Memorial day weekend where
I came very close before wet holds prevented any more progress. I came back for the 4th of July
weekend and made even more progress falling at the pocket below the jug. I tried so hard that weekend for four days in
a row but couldn’t get it done. The
pressure was unbearable. I took a month
off, I doubted myself, I day dreamed, and I finally just got back to training
and tried to not give a fuck anymore. August
9th, 2016 I finally made what had previously been an almost daily
day dream and visualization a reality.
All the screaming and yelling that ensued as I was lowered was just a
release. Like steam gradually building
up behind a release valve the process this route had taken me through had built
and built, sending was the final piece before triggering that emotional valve
to open. All of the time spent thinking
about my sequence, training for the route, wondering if I was light enough,
strong enough, or just plain ready for the climb came pouring out of me in
whoops and yells. I wanted to take my
shoes off and fling them into the forest, I wanted to strip down naked and run
to the top of Little si, I wanted to chug every beer I had brought and collapse
in a heaving pile of relief, I wanted to grab everyone on the ledge and bear
hug them at the same time. I felt
empowered, overjoyed, and relived all at once.
It was almost too much to handle.
I had to calm down quickly though.
What set me off the most was just how unexpected it all was. There had been several times before this
where I had felt stronger, the conditions had maybe been a little better, I had
executed sequences more efficiently; but in the end none of that mattered. I had spent so much time trying to convince
myself that I needed to be perfect for this to happen, that I needed that ‘black
swan’ moment in order to make it to this level.
But it was all just a fallacy. What I had really needed was to give up my
stranglehold on not allowing myself to make mistakes.
I hope everyone reading this is in good health, good
spirits, and are surrounded by people who they love and who motivate them to be
completely imperfectly perfect human beings.
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