My bud Sonnie Trotter finally sent Rhapsody (edit, brain junk), which is a really hard trad (meaning no bolts) line over in Scotland. If you haven't been following his blog I'd really recommend checking it out. He did some fine writing about trying to climb something really hard--the mental ups and downs, and finally success. Good stuff, a big group of both friends and people who were reading his blog were really hoping he'd get the job done. We went so far as to offer $ to help him change his ticket (which he politely declined, but he won't be buying beer for a bit I'm sure), post rants on his blog and just generally let him know we were pulling for him. It was fun to push some energy across the Atlantic. Sonnie's writing and climbing got me fired up to train harder and go at it with more intensity, thanks to Sonnie for that. I heard that our cluster of attempted support actually might have helped Sonnie make the decision to stay, which was all he really needed to climb the rig so I'm super psyched to have been a very small part of his send along with everyone else who was pulling for the kid to get 'er done. Yeah! Now the question is: Sonnie, what the hell took ya so long? Grin...
Cory Richards (the friend I finally got Yamabushi down with a couple of years ago) is over there with Sonnie and also having at a very hard route. He and Sonnie have already changed their tickets twice, time is ticking, get 'er done Cory!
Training Notes:
I'm just giving it at the moment and loving it! The weather sucks, I've got tweaky elbows, tweaky fingers, a torqued knee and some other issues but damn is it fun to be putting it all into climbing right now. Some days I make big leaps in progress and feel my old limits disappearing, other days I'm back to where I was four months ago, but that's how it works. You just gotta show up, do your best to train and climb well, and the curve slowly keeps going up. I know I can't hold this training and performance level for long, but I've got some ideas that are important to me, hopefully the lines of performance and my objectives will cross at the right time.