Friday 14 December 2012

Sweat is fat crying

I've spent the last few days working with the lovely Ulrike focusing on single pitch climbing.  Ulrike had just spent the last two weeks on a bootcamp, living on 1,000 calories/day while being beasted for 6hrs/day - including, boxercise, 10km runs, circuits, hill walks....  The bootcamp included motivational phrases such as "sweat is fat crying".  Sounds horrible and amusing in equal measures.
With this in mind I was expecting a beasting but was very glad when she told me she wanted a chilled week of nice climbing.
On top of Escalare Arabe pillar

Having spent a week with Silvia Fitzpatrick in January, Ulrike already had a lot of the basic skills, so it was a case of a refresher on skills already learned and moving on from there.
Throughout the week we looked at movement on various rock from slabs, vertical and overhanging  routes; clipping quickdraws efficiently and correctly; re-threading anchors and eventually moved on to leading routes.

top roping at La Gaita
As it was a chilled week we also spent the days enjoying other distractions.  I was introduced to Carajillo - a coffee and brandy for breakfast, rumored to have been drank by troops for courage,  which set up the day nicely for some courageous climbing.


escalare arabe
We also were introduced to Silvi's puppies, Ratita and Osita.  The breaks between climbs were definitely often and long as the puppies were great to play with.  So we focused on the importance of rest between climbs as Ulrike got her first ever leads in that day.  Relaxing mentally and physically is an important part of the day and the puppies provided a fantastic distraction.


puppy power

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