Dampened

Eversince Tanleng came close to finishing Ghetto Crossing (possibly 8a with the ridiculous sequence that she's doing and falling a move from the chains), we've been getting out to Malibu Creek State Park alot.

And since I was stuck having to belay her on her project and not having the chance to get back to Echo Cliffs, I thought I'll jump on Lateralus 14a for a go. This climb was put up by Shawn Diamond back in the day and everyone I spoke to told me it has this ridiculously hard boulder problem (V10 possibly) before linking into Ghetto Crossing. After working on it for a good frustrating 3 weekends, the verdict is that it is ridiculous NOT, hard YES! Frustrating...definitely!! Why? Cos just when I began to make pretty good progress on it, things would happen in our personal life that took 2 or even 3 weeks away from our projects. So there's this on-going roller-coaster ride where I'll make progress, get on a 2-3 week break and return to getting shutdown, making progress again and the whole process will go on and on and on and on.....Furthermore, the climb isn't something one can get away with just by having good power endurance cos if you can't even pull those moves, there's nothing to endure unlike some marathon 8b+s like Millenium in Maple Canyon.

To make matters worse, the rain has been beating down for the past couple of weekends, completely raining us out! Yes my dear Californians, we do need the rain but being from Spore and having experienced 30 over years of tropical monsoon rains, I ain't a fan of precipitaion for very selfish reasons.

So here we are stuck in the climbing gym, strong...perhaps, stoopid...yes. I may have maintained my bouldering power but I must say not being outdoors has detrimental effects on my climbing form. Kinda reminded me of myself when I was bouldering well in my 20s but sucked when it came to sport climbing. If you've watched me lead, not glamorous that's for sure. However, the encouraging thing is getting on Facebook to see friends back in Spore still getting psyched climbing on plastic and the resurgence of activity at Dairy Farm by Derek and gang. I hope I can rub-off some of that motivation especially when I haven't been in the pink of health lately plus not giving myself a break in between workouts. And you would think that an exercise physiologist like me would know better when it comes to periodization. Such is the desire for progress that it has driven me towards irrationality.

Rain, rain please go away cos the fields aren't the only thing you've dampened.