Gettin back to it!

So. . .

It's been a while since I lasted posted and I didn't even write a wrap up post to the Ten Sleep trip. Long story shot, I repeatedly fell from the last move to the chains of a 13a for the final four days of the trip. In the end, I feel that not sending was not the worst thing that could have happened. I came back to Portland with more psych to train and get strong than I have ever had. I had a  plan to get a quick training cycle in to prepare for a hopefully succesful fall break at Smith. It's now fall break and I feel that I made some critical errors in training that I need to fix for my next cycle. I started out strong with hangboard sessions on the homemade hockey stick hangboard to gain some strength (felt much stronger than ever before). However, after my planned 2 weeks of fingerboard hypertrophy training, I somewhat lost focus as I tried to transfer into a maximum recruitment campusing based phase. I ended up simply bouldering at the gym with only a session or two of campusing. I was climbing in the same style much too frequently and not allowing myself to recover. As my artistic and atheletic outlet, it is difficult for me to go a day without climbing. It has become my way of relaxing after a long day of class and work. With a schedule of 5 to 6 days at the bouldering gym a week, however, I felt as though I was entering a slow spiral into exhaustion and sub-par performance. I was not providing enough time for recovery or varying my routine at all. I simply pulled down on plastic boulder problems all the time. Two weeks before fall break, I finally came to my senses and busted out five or so sessions of pumpy, intense traverses all over the climbing gym and anaerobic endurance intensive weekend rat cave sessions. Not quite enough to feel fully fit, but better than nothin I guess. Even so, after a week off, I feel as strong as ever from all the bouldering, but not super ready for pumpy routes.

I'm currently sitting in a Redmond coffee shop, typing away on my phone and waiting for jessi's flight to come in. I spent the last two days onsiting a bunch of Smith 5.10s and 11s (which somehow never seem to get easier and always keep me on my toes) and working on Chain Reaction. After two days of effort and 4 goes, Chain will go any time. I one hung it 3rd go with a bumble in between the two cruxes and feel like I have all the sequences down and merely need to execute. To my surprise, Chain is actually one of my favorite routes I have touched at Smith. Maybe it's the substantial history of the route, the atheletic and bouldery sequences, or it's contrast in style to the standard Smith vertical techfests, but I feel that even after sending, I will continue to climb the route for years!

After Smith I plan on taking a couple days off then returning to training with renewed motivation and focus. I currently have an 8 week training cycle planned out. It is planned around a winter bouldering trip to Bishop and will therefore have an abbreviated Aenerobic Endurance training phase. I will force myself take more rest days during Max Recruitment and Hypertrophy phases. I will accomplish this either by jogging or super low intensity ARC traversing on rest days if I cannot stand not climbing. I also plan on posting on this blog much more frenquently and will continuously provide updates as to my progress and more specifics on my training practices. This is as mostly to provide a record for myself and stay on track as I do not believe anyone reads this blog.

Till next time

Eric

Photos taken by Toby. Thanks!

Sequence of the top dynoish move and the lower crux