The second session of climbing outside, this year...
This Saturday I had the opportunity to go outside on a climbing session for the second time this year! In retrospect, I think I did well, despite my lack of climbing outside and trying hard things.
The climbing spot were we went is called Petnička Cave, near the city of Valjevo. You can find out more about the place on the link below.
Tribe
Goal setting
Recently, I started having explicit goals for my climbing sessions outside. What will I climb, how many tries, etc. This session was the same. The day before, I sat with myself and the guidebook and decided on the goals for tomorrow.
The goals and outcomes were as follows:
- repeat 7a route called Trap (Klopka in Serbian) ✅
- climb 6c route called Stone flower (Kameni cvet in Serbian) ❌ - I tried 7c route instead.
- have 6 good tries ✅ ❌ - I had 5 okay-ish tries.
Session breakdown
In a nutshell, I think I did good! I started warming up on the 7a route I wanted to repeat. The warm up was okay-ish, I repeated the crux without any issue, and I didn't feel pumped after it. That was first try. I rested for around 30 mins.
The second try I fell on the crux. The reason was that when I did the crux in the warm up, I was rested, and when I got there, I was pumped and didn't make the crux move as I did it in the warm up. Then I took another rest for around 40 mins.
The third try I fell two moves after the crux. I was too pumped to continue, and my rests before were not enough to make sure I have enough juice until the end. After that I decided to rest around 50 minutes.
The fourth try was a send! I did everything as expected, listened to my breath, rested well, and I was focused during the send and after the crux move. Then I rested for around 30 minutes or so.
Then I decided that my fifth and last try won't be the 6c route, because it was occupied, but instead I'll try the neighbouring 7c route called Beerus. I went on a rediscovery try because I already tried that route before. Here I didn't focus too much on the moves before the crux and I spent around 15 minutes on trying to solve the crux itself. I did found the solution, but I wasn't able to link it up, and then both I and the limited time I had, decided that is all for the day.
Even though I had limited time, I managed to repeat this 7a route in 4 tries, the route which I was projecting for quite some number of sessions before that. I'm not sure about the overall amount of tries before, but I think it took me more than 15 tries in 3 or 4 sessions on it. So, some improvement, I would say.
As to the second route - I didn't have too much time to focus on it, which is bad, but I now know some of the moves and I did the crux. All that has left is just to redo the moves after the crux, and link everything together. Just...
What did I learn?
The first thing is that setting goals for the session for me seems to be mandatory. Even though some of the sessions before contained and the future sessions will contain mostly project browsing, putting the number of tries as the session goal really helps me focus! What I might do is to try and set goals not just for each outdoor session, but for each climbing session.
The second thing - really think deep and plan where will you rest during the attempt and how much time will you rest between the attempts. I didn't do this properly after the warm-up and between 2nd and 3rd try, and it cost me one or two additional tries to send the route.
The third thing - bring some fruit next time, e.g. orange, apple, peach, or tangerine, just to fuel up before the send attempt. I brought baked hazelnuts, but they weren't quite the sugar boost I needed.
The fourth thing - worry not over limited time, focus on climbing instead. Every time before, when I had limited hours for climbing, I let this lack of time impact my climbing - rushing into routes, into warm up, and so on. This time I focused more on climbing and I think the overall result was positive!
When and where will I climb next?
Don't know, it's too early to plan.