Recent Training and Bouldering

I've finally started to shrug off the extra pounds and muscle atrophy from the holidays, but I still feel like I'm not climbing at the top of my game. I've noticed a few mantles and roofs/overhung routes that feel much harder than usual, so I've tried to address this by watching my nutrition a little closer and doing a little HIT training. Nothing like getting on the HIT strips to make you face the reality of how out of shape you are:) After a little training, I felt stronger on these style of routes, but still climbing a grade or 2 below my potential.

Yesterday, I went out to Little Eastatoee and topo'ed another area, The Bubbles, and put up another mini-guide in the previous blogpost. If you're out at LE and want soemthing besides the boulders at the Bridge, this is the next stop down the trail to offer some routes. Its not as good of quality or quantity of routes compared to the Bridge Area, but its nice to have a couple of different areas to spread visits out to. This is actually one of the first areas I've ever bouldered, along with Jones Gap State Park, nearly 20 years ago, so it has some personal memories for me.

I also took a second look at some shorter routes that I just kept ignoring at the Bridge area, and was pleasantly surprised. I named one of the boulders the Batman boudler, one of my favorite all time superheroes, and sent a few great quality, burly, low ball routes...maybe some of the best at LE. I FA'ed Utility Belt V4-, a short terribly slopey mantle, Bruce Wayne V3, a short SDS with decent holds to a interesting mantle, The Dark Knight V4, Bruce Wayne into Utility Belt, and Scarecrow V3, similar to Bruce Wayne. I almost sent Two Face, an eaier V3 just to the right of Scarecrow, and worked some on The Joker, what I feel will finally check in at around a V5 due to some horrible feet and a bad SDS. I also worked a couple of other problems on a boulder beside the Batman boulder, which I called the Saw Boulder. I named it after one of my favorite movie series due to a pig nose looking feature on the corner of the block. Pigface is a V2 that uses the pig nose feature to mantle onto a slopey slab and a pretty easy finish, and "I Wanna Play A Game..." is a simple V0 with enough feet to stand up before wrestling the upper slabby stuff for the finish. Its good to find some more quality routes and add some new stuff to the Bridge Area Mini-Guide, which has currently been updated as of 1-13-10. I'm looking forward to working on the rest of the Batman problems and hopefully finding a few more new climbs over the next few weeks. As usual, I'll post updates and newer topo's as they are revised or created...stay tuned!