Focus On Performance

I love this video of Wide Boyz, Tom Randall and Pete Whittaker, on the first ascent of Century Crack (5.14b/33 or just bloody hard) in Canyonlands, Utah. At the time (possibly still), Century Crack was the hardest, traditional, off-width climb in the world. Have a gander at how exhausted Tom Randall looks at minute five on the video as he pulls/pushes/struggles through the final off-width to top out. How many of us can say we have ever tried half so hard to achieve anything in life?

Of course, the Wide Boyz are now well known for their infamous cellar training routines to prepare for Century Crack (and other off-widths), but, anyone who climbs, knows that climbing is almost as much a mental game as it is a physical challenge and I also think Randall’s mantra “focus on performance not the goal” is immensely insightful. Struggling through difficult things is just a lot more enjoyable and rewarding if you focus on performing not getting to the endpoint.

Down here on the south coast, I’ve had a couple of great days, climbing yesterday with Doug who has almost expelled the leech toxin from his body and bouldering by myself today. Yesterday, Doug lured me into thinking I was climbing OK by his judicious and encouraging commentary as I was leading all the routes. Buoyed up by this rallying support, I attempted a route I have managed to squirm up a couple of times when feeling very fit but failed somewhat dismally, not even linking the moves together. I actually could not understand how I had not wafted up like a gentle fart on a summer breeze until Doug finally confessed “well, you didn’t look like you were climbing as solidly today.” Initially, I was a bit miffed at being so badly misled but upon reflection, I realised Doug had done me a favour as I launched up the route with solid confidence which makes an important difference in your ability to try hard.

I had to get up at O-Dark-O’Clock today to get down to my current favourite bouldering area to get the tide right for bouldering, and, while it was lovely to arrive at the beach near sunrise with no-one else about, warming up took longer than usual as I was stiffer and sorer than usual from what amounts to three days of climbing training in a row and there was a strong wind blowing. My old climbing buddy, Hamish used to sum this up saying he was “stiff in all the wrong places at all the wrong times.”

After a couple of hours I had that done feeling where even easy things were starting to feel hard and I was faffing about more than climbing. Rather than jumping straight into the car and heading home thus guaranteeing I would arrive crippled up like the hunchback of Notre Dame, I walked along the trail for an hour, through a forest of gnarled and twisted eucalypts reminiscent of a scene from a Tolkien novel.