MegèveSki

Climbing until your arms explode

Another evening at The Castle and since none of my regular climbing partners were around I joined in "The Session" again. Once again my climbing this evening was pushed to new levels because the people I was climbing with decided that's what I needed... I sense a bit of a theme here...

I arrived for The Session a little late and everyone else was already climbing. There were a lot of us tonight and I made an odd number, and I had missed the initial pairing up so I climbed with Ceri, the instructor/staff member running The Session. This actually worked out rather well for me as Ceri pushed me quite hard and was always ready with helpful suggestions. After cruising up a 4C I was given a 5A which turned out reasonably OK. Of course all routes are not created equal and the subsequent 5As that I tried were considerably harder than the first one.

Whereas my recent climbing sessions have been quite hard but reasonably sustainable, I have managed to climb then belay then climb for the whole two hours or so without any need for long breaks, today was different. The failed 5As needed long breaks after them for my arms to recover. One needed a good 10 minutes of sitting down sipping a double espresso, nibbling a large Snickers bar and shaking and massaging my forearms before I could even consider climbing again. I actually felt like my arms were so pumped up that they'd explode if I tried to do anything more with them :) Still, once I'd recovered I tried the route again, and again, and eventually got to the top. Once again it was more of an "aha!" moment followed by the "correct" movements rather than some massive skill or strength thing. Next time I hope to nail that one cleanly as I got a bit sloppy near the top.

Both of the 5As that I was having trouble with involved slight overhangs and the harder of the two involved working around a sharp corner and then back again, the trick being to control your body as you flowed around the corner so that you didn't swing too much. In the end I got to the top of both of them and, hopefully, I'll do them both more cleanly next time.

As always, watching the more experienced climbers helped. Given how hard I worked my arms I had plenty of rest time to watch and learn. As Ceri said, it's good to climb within your limits and it's good to push yourself sometimes. I think that next time I climb I'll go back within my limits, but I expect that those limits will be slightly expanded on the limits that I had before today.

I wonder if my arms will still work in the morning...