Proj Report

Man, I'm getting slammed!

Had my 40th shot on my Pulpit project on the weekend. I'm in the best and strongest shape of my life, but it's still slapping me down like a fly being swatted.

Still, it was my best day on it so far, with more progress and some good knowledge seeping in. Like, we've deduced that my breathing (or lack thereof) is a real problem. It took my belayer to point this out to me. I was coming off the crux gasping for breath. So now I have to concentrate on the breathing, and how to breathe during extremely hard, tension moves.

I'm going to do it. I know it. But until then...

Let the smackdown continue!



37

#1: 38% humidity and cold. Struggled to connect first time with cold fingers. Went to beginning of crux and grabbed, clipped in and worked crux. Only managed it like 1 in 6 times. Not good!

38

#2: Slapped crimp, completely out of breath. Need to learn to breathe.

39

#3: Strongest shot yet. Slapped crimp, then came down to SUPER LOW LINK and did it on the second try all the way through (i.e. 7 moves into the crux, then through). The day I climb 20 moves into the crux then through I have completed the route.

40

#4: Breathing was the focus. Made the slap again, barely, bit low on power on shot #4. There's some subtlety on the brick pinch I've yet to decipher. Sometimes it feels locker, other times like a slippery catfish.

3 comments:

Rodney Polkinghorne said...

Cool details, Lee.

Do you usually wear out after 3 to 4 shots on a hard redpoint? That happens to me, when I'm doing well, but I assumed harder climbers could do many more shots in a day. I've been looking for ways to improve it, without much success.

Lee Cujes said...

Pretty much yeah, for me at least. It does tend to depend on the nature of the route though, and how much of your top-band power it requires.

If your route is short and bouldery (i.e. you fall off not due to pump), it may require your top few percent of max strength, and this may only be there for a couple of tries (especially if you're dogging). On days like this though, I find that even after my projecting, I am able to drop it back a couple of grades and just keep on climbing on other routes. On Schadenfreude (bouldery) I managed to work up to 6 good shots per day (in lots of two i.e. burn a shot, 10 min break, redpoint attempt, repeat). I ended up sending on the 4th shot of the day.

However if your project is an power endurance marathon where you're doing tons of climbing at 75+% of max strength, you can suffer from exhaustion after four shots. Then you might struggle to climb much of anything for the rest of the day.

Rodney Polkinghorne said...

Thanks Lee.