Wood and trees

My climbing partner, who I had not seen for several months, asked, quite legitimately, what grade I now climb. I remained evasive. Of course there is an answer, but there are so many caveats to it (is it vertical but technical? Sustained or featuring an overhang?), that it would have taken too long to give a full and thorough reply. I responded with some unconvincing muttering, but I suppose the main reason I didn't want to answer was because I didn't want to (quite literally) set myself up for a fall.

Week in, week out, the Simple Chick and I are down the wall. Sometimes we climb better than others, during some periods we are frustrated, at other times we feel like we are making real progress, but twice a week we are there, climbing routes, doing pull-ups, drinking 'one tea and one coffee' and indulging in rather a lot of gossiping. I don't blog about these sessions for no other reason than I have no photographs of us climbing (or eating Chia Charge bars). 

When I watch the Simple Chick and her excellent use of smears and screw ons, I am so proud of her. For months she wouldn't lead at all and it took a long period of steady progression for her to get where she is now. I often watch her on the sharp end and I know that 6 months ago, she wouldn't have even attempted routes she now looks so smooth and confident on; to me, the improvement in her climbing is obvious. But in my own head I am still the same climber I always was and perhaps that is why it was so difficult for me to answer that initial question. It's hard for me to stand back far enough to know if anything is changing, I am particularly good at convincing myself that 'I can't' or even that parts of the wall 'are not for me'. And I don't know why I think like this, because, as Coach Emma pointed out the other day, that's not at all the way I think about running races. 

Coach Emma's overhang aversion therapy.

My coached session earlier in the week had looked at overhangs and so yesterday, when it was very quickly clocked that I appeared to have become blind to the overhanging routes behind me, I thought I better HTFU and get back on the first route I had worked with Emma. I was pleased, on reaching the crossover, to find myself placing my foot correctly and twisting right to reach the next hold with ease. And for the first time in a long time, I realised that, although I was aware of the overhang being there, this fact did not really bother me, I was far too focused on what I was doing. Back on the ground, my climbing partner said, 'You bossed that route!', elaborating with a (slightly uncharitable) impression of me whimpering on the same overhang 5 months previously, 'Today,' he said, 'you just did it, without hesitation.'

I continued the session with my first clean lead of a very steep and sustained 6a; 5 months ago, I wouldn't have even attempted it. Perhaps, sometimes, you just need that view from outside, to help you obtain perspective on yourself and all those things you didn't even realise that you have achieved.