Sunday, February 27, 2011

An 11 Month Climbing Trip

Lee Cujes – an Aussie climbing coach – just got back from 11 months of climbing all over the world. Incluiding:

Kalymnos (Greece), Geyikbayiri,Olympos (Turkey), Boulder, Rifle, Maple Canyon, Ten Sleep Canyon(all USA), Rodellar, Margalef, Arboli, Riglos (all Spain), Vietnam, Hong Kong, Yangshuo (China), & Railay (Thailand).”

He learned that climbing 4-6 days/week builds endurance:

There were times during the year where I felt not particularly strong, but virtually 'unpumpable'. I can tell you that is a rare and amazing feeling I've not really had before in 16 years of climbing. I think that I can't really achieve this state with my usual weekend warrior routine, and only by climbing big days on difficult routes for 4-6 days a week, week in, week out. Not really an option if you have a regular life.”

And climbing in different areas helped his onsighting ability:

I climbed quite a lot. Well over 600 pitches according to my notes. I didn't climb as hard as I might have at home. I guess this is to be expected for a few reasons. Home is familiar territory; you tend to do best where you've had the most practise. At home, you're usually forced to rest (sitting at a desk). On a trip like that, it's hard to discipline yourself to rest enough in order to recover and be able to really climb hard. Often I'd just think "well, I could have a rest day or just dial the difficulty down a couple of notches and onsight a stack of things" and that thinking often won out, especially in areas I hadn't climbed at much (kid in a candy store).

On the plus side though, my onsighting improved a lot (a number of personal bests) which I think is aided by simply climbing heaps on lots of different rock types.”

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