Tuesday 24 June 2008

Motivation and purpose 1


1. A speculative climbing purpose.

Rewind a bit selecta.... Earlier this year. Getting strong. Getting more into bouldering. Getting injured but still psyched. Getting involved with a fresh focus. Getting over to Font. Getting some ideas from dedicated and determined climbers - in particular http://www.unclesomebody.com/blog/, which has some of the best explorations of personal climbing philosophy (because it IS a personal journey) I've read and should be printed as a book.

All of this got me thinking: A fresh focus....why not make it totally fresh and totally focused?? Actually put some serious effort into bouldering (and maybe sport climbing), and in particular some serious effort into working projects - projects beyond what I can currently do, projects which will push me onwards (to where? To nowhere except along the path of progression).

Although I have pushed myself in bouldering, and worked some projects, I haven't done so on a long term basis. My previous hardest problems had taken me a few hours over a couple of days (often due to skin), my recent hardest problems had taken a couple of hours or less. Which is pretty quick really. No multiple sessions over many weeks. No specific training/practising. No careful skin/rest/recovery schedules. No relentless involvement with the minutae of moves beyond my limits.

So maybe this was something to try, something different, learn something new, see what I was capable of, open up new inspirations etc etc. New inspiration like, for example, this - very cool but beyond my current limits, like plenty of harder bouldering I've seen around.

Okay, beyond my current limits but also beyond current feasible travelling. To fully work something I would need to be near it, so I looked closer to home for challenges in that category - "inspiring but too hard" - and found a few. Projects I could try, work, train for, go back to time and time again and push myself further.

But I also found myself thinking....is this really for me??....is this what I personally want out of climbing??...

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