I went climbing last night (big surprise there), and finally decided to get organized about my recreation.

Thus far, climbing has consisted of wandering around the gym looking for a route that catches my fancy.  I’ll find myself a person willing to belay me, and I’ll climb until I reach the top - or can’t climb any further.  Back to the ground for a drink of water and some rest before my next climb …

… this approach works OK for a while, but I started to realize that my approach was haphazard and not really helping me get any better.  After trying a few routes that were entirely out of my league, I’d fall back on the old familiar routes I had climbed a hundred times before …

Routes in my gym are classed by color.  They range (from easiest to most difficult) through white, green, orange, yellow and red.

Last night, I took careful stock of the routes I had successfully completed.  All of them were either white or green, with one orange that I barely made it to the top of (more through luck and stupidity than any sort of strategy).  The routes I was now trying were yellow and red - well out of my abilities right now.

I started focusing on the green routes I hadn’t done yet (I did one with ease, one with some difficulty and didn’t complete a third), and challenged myself with a few oranges (didn’t complete any, but got further than in previous attempts).

I also learned that the routes I’m climbing range in the 5.8 to 5.9 range.  Not bad, I say, for a person who only got back into it two weeks ago.

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Posted in Blog
Written on Fri, 02 November 2007 at 7:34 am
Tags: climbing
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