I’m Likely to Fail
If you’ve read my book, The Hard Truth, you know that I like to throw my hat over the fence. That’s a phrase my grandpa used to use.
“If you want to climb a fence, but can’t muster the courage, throw your hat over. Then you have to climb the damned thing.”
I needed a reason to put some focus on sport climbing. The climbing style at some of the nearby areas isn’t my favorite (or my strongest, which I suspect is related to level of enjoyment). But it was a fence I wanted to climb, so I threw my hat over.
I told people I wanted to get to 100 unique 5.13s and harder by my 50th birthday.
If I could have done them at the same rate that I did in my 30s, it would have been an easy task. But I was long past my 30s, I hadn’t really sport climbed in years, and I had other things I wanted to spend my time on. Every route I checked off meant the relatively small pool I had to choose from became even smaller. And with a new toddler in the mix, time and energy was going to be even harder to come by.
Then came the hardest winter of my life. Constantly sick, a ruptured eardrum, buried in work. I inadvertently became the bad partner, having to cancel over and over when daycare closed or I came down with something passed to me by a two-year-old who seemed to bounce back in minutes.
I still got out. I still hate-sent a few very slippery, very crimpy, vertical 5.13s.
Now I’m only a few days away from my 50th, and I’m probably going to fail to reach that goal.
Which gets me excited.
I don’t set goals so that I can achieve them.
I set goals so that I can chase them.
Don’t get me wrong; achieving the goal at the last possible moment – the proverbial game winning shot at the buzzer – would be the perfect completion of a pursuit. Because, despite the rhetoric, like I detailed in my first REMIX episode about Process, the outcome is incredibly important.
I WANT those 100 routes.
I’ve done 98. I’m so close.
And I’ll get there, no question. In fact, I likely could have been there already but I chose to go another direction.
See, this goal is in service of the more abstract and much bigger goal of challenging myself on hard sport climbs and finding enjoyment in it. That path led in a slightly different direction than I expected it would. A detour.
Or maybe a shortcut.
In the process of picking off low 13s at outlying areas where I hadn’t spent much time, I checked out an abandoned project that Paul Piana had bolted back in the 90s. Most of it hadn’t been cleaned and a few of the old bolts needed to be moved or replaced. And then I quickly discovered that I couldn’t do either of the two cruxes.
But something about it held my attention.
So I went back and cleaned a little. I spent an entire day figuring out the first crux. Then three more full days figuring out the second crux. Then four or five afternoons cleaning the steep 50-foot 12a headwall and moving a couple of bolts. Then a few days working out the remaining sequences and making links, falling slightly higher and higher in the V8 slab crux.
Oh, and I bolted a couple of new things in the midst of all of that. **Face Palm Emoji.**
Anyway, I ran the breakdown of the big project through Darth Grader and it told me it must be 13d. I’m not buying that, but I also don’t have the slightest clue how to grade a slab crux. So 13c sounds fair.
Last Thursday, I finished it. Barely. I nearly fell off of five moves in a row on the slab, but somehow held on. Number 98.
If you want to see static phone footage of the two cruxes, it’s on my Instagram.
I called it “No Time Not To”. I had decided on that name because there is a story that Paul Piana once asked a pro-climber in town why they never established new routes. “I don’t have time to do new routes,” was their answer, to which Paul responded, “Funny, I don’t have time not to.”
But as I hung at the anchors, I realized that the name was a double entendre. Even though this was going to slow me down, I didn’t have time NOT to chase this rabbit down its hole. I had to follow the motivation. That doesn’t mean I left the immediate goal behind. This just got rolled into it. And sure, now reaching the goal is going to be even harder.
But harder is exactly why we do this.
CONNECTING THE DOTS
Frankly, I’ve mostly been NOT making things after putting so much of myself into the Atomic Elements course and chasing this goal, but it hasn’t been entirely quiet over here. These aren’t necessarily connected dots except for the fact that it’s what we’ve been thinking about.
I recently had a great conversation with Lauren and Caitlin from The Average Climber Podcast, discussing the Atomic Elements of Climbing Movement course and framework. It’s always a good time on their show, and I always walk away with new things to think about.
Speaking of entertainment, Nate and I have recently been reviewing climbing films, discussing the film as well as the lessons we can take away from them. We’re calling these episodes MOVIE NIGHT, and it’s been a great way to tap into watching some of the standouts among the avalanche of climbing content that makes its way onto YouTube. Let me know if you have recommendations.
We’re also cooking up a few sorely needed Board Meetings about some of the claims and rhetoric around training finger strength. Not that our claims and rhetoric need to be added, but we’re going to anyway. If you can’t beat ‘em, join ‘em. Or something like that…
While we’re on the subject of Board Meetings, we put a couple of good ones out recently for our Patrons, both interrogating the patterns that so many of us have just fallen into. The first asks the question Is Your Climbing Training Corrective or Constructive? Oftentimes, we are training in a reactive way rather than a proactive way. We followed that up with Consistency Isn’t What You Think It Is, exploring the difference between frequency and consistency, and why just showing up might not actually be all that helpful of a habit.
I’ve got a couple of routes to get done in the next five days, so I’m headed out the door. That or I’m taking Harper to the bike park where she’s just a little too daring for my comfort. Either way, wish me luck.
Once I’ve finished this goal, I’ll be focusing on Written in Stone Season 2, there’s a book in the works, and then we’ll take a deeper dive than has ever been taken into climbing tactics and strategies…
But you know the deal. If you have thoughts or questions, respond directly to this email and I’ll get back to you.
See you in a month or so,
Kris
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