Oi Vay!

I’m going to try to write this quick and without getting worked up.

Again, another break from climbing. Wasn’t the holiday craziness supposed to end and leave me with an abundance of time and energy to pursue my passions?

I’m still working 3 jobs; Best Buy, the climbing gym and coaching. Also I’ve hit the ground running, working to get at least one paid gig a month for photography of videography (that’s what I went to school for.).

So, it’s a struggle to get to the gym with any enthusiasm. I am working out with the Pole Vaulters I coach. But that’s not climbing. In fact, it’s not the kind of training I should be doing at all. Same muscles (even my hands to some degree) but wrong style of training.

Plus, I tweaked my hand. I have an ever present addiction to caffeine and continue to deprive myself of sleep. Please don’t think I’m complaining, I love what I do. That has to be the reason I’ve made it this long.

So I drag myself to the gym. Not “Hopped in the car, played loud music, got jacked, and tore the place to pieces.” No, it was a quiet ride. Mentally drained before even setting my stuff down to boot up, I say to myself, “Get your headphones on, drift away. Do some laps. You’ll wake up.” But I didn’t. I was frequently stopped by friends, all wanting to know where I had been the past few weeks. I just hope they took the look on my face for exhaustion and not exasperation.

I warm up. There is no pain in my hand, it’s just weak. It never did hurt. I swear nothing ever “hurts.” It just stops working. It takes a lot of effort not to get frustrated. Not to see the numbers clearly labeling the problems. I’m getting shut down by THAT?! I keep lowering the difficulty until finally I can fumble through it.

My feet are sloppy, heavy, uncoordinated. My mind is foggy, distant, and scattered. I begin to traverse, be productive… “I’m pumped?! I… I don’t understand.” I drop my boots and lay my back on the cold concrete. I was ready to call it a day. Pack up and retreat.

A friend, someone who has shown incredible improvement in such a short time climbing, drags me over to a new unlabeled wall and pesters me into playing on these routes until the old me starts to surface.

But just like that, the nights over. The lights are turning off and it’s time to go. “But I’m here now. Finally, I’m awake! My body and I are working together again.”

I spent the ride home thinking of fire analogies. “The embers were dimming and blah blah blah…” Fortunately, I didn’t write them. They were terrible.

I can’t fix my hand overnight. The only thing to do is be smart and get healthy. Pushing it too hard, too soon only risks making it worse and at best, staves off healing.

The next month will be a good chance to play, reacquaint myself with the wall. Hell, improve footwork (Lord knows I need it.)

Anyways, thank you for listening. I’ll keep you posted. And also, Thank you for the great comments on my last post. The response to the video was really positive and I’ve already talked to a few climbers that are looking to do a video once the weather is a bit nicer.

James Race Carr

Update? lol

I have not been updating. I basically fell off the blogosphere after my post on getting that first v7. Why? Super busy, sick, needed a break, planning a massive shoot (that got cancelled… wah wah.) and growing a beard. It’s more draining than you think.

So what have I been doing? Well… it’s 1:32 am currently and I’m going to knock out this blog so I don’t continue to leave you hanging.

As far as climbing goes, I changed my strategy to work on footwork. It’s amazing how setting a simple goal of “not being so sloppy with my feet.” …actually scratch that. Put in the positive, please. “Being better with my feet.” Really helped dial in my focus. It also gave my upper body joints a reprieve from the constant abuse I place them under. I very quickly noticed how quiet my stepping became and how much more efficient I felt.

And though I’m far from finished on that front, I am improving.

Next… Training with the college kids has seemed to be very counter productive in my training for a v10. In fact, between the morning workouts and the having a couple jobs and then not sleeping because I WILL get my time in at the gym… I’ve struggled to even tackle v5’s. For this reason, and several others, I will probably be limiting the amount of time I spend with the College kids (outside of our actual practice time… Because that’s pole vault, my other love.) just so I don’t continue to hinder my progress.

As I mentioned, I had a really awesome film shoot scheduled for about 2 weeks ago. However it got cancelled. The art of CYA, or Cover Your Ass, came into effect and I didn’t do a good enough job of it. It’s not often I make big mistakes, or mistakes I can’t correct. But I was spread too thin and I got sloppy. Noted. Lesson Learned. Moving on.

And since I had all that fun equipment, I asked my gym (The Circuit) if I could come in before closing and shoot some climbers doing some routes. It ended up being just me, with one camera, but the footage looks useable and I’m very excited for what I can do with that little bit of tester footage. Hopefully if I impress enough people, maybe I can do something a little bigger with more crew and deliver some really nice product. Product, simply meaning a finished video… not necessarily something I’m trying to make a ton of money from.

And THAT is my Third, and most important love. The one I don’t think I could live without. For example, this labor of love, is also something I finished in the time since we last spoke.

A music video I did for Tim Lundy, the guy who does all the sound for my projects at Intense Entertainment.

The only other thing I’ve been doing is trying to learn some new training techniques. Despite everything I know about strength training and training the body to improve via muscle recruitment, or PNF or any other number of training tools… I really want to specifically learn training regimens geared towards improving my Technique. So I’m reading The Self Coached Climber, and learning some new tricks from that.

That’s all I’m going to post in here, tonight. Saturday, I’m participating in my first Competition. Just for fun. It’ll be at Edgeworks in Tacoma Washington. I really want to just hop in and have a good time. No stress for how well I perform compared to everyone else. Just compete against myself. If I can keep that in mind, I’m sure to have an awesome time.

Have a great night. I’ll give you the play by play on Monday… give or take a few days. ;)

James