Well my climbing partner Dave and I have officially launched our training for this year's 24 Hours of Horseshoe Hell competition. 24HHH is only the world's coolest climbing competition. It's held at the end of September at Horseshoe Canyon Ranch near Jasper, Arkansas. 100 pairs of climbers start at 10 a.m. on Saturday morning and climb until 10 a.m. the next morning. Climbers get points for each route completed. The harder the route, the more points it's worth. Climbers get bonus points for completing at least one route every hour. This is the fourth year for the competition, and it looks to be bigger and better than ever. I've competed in the previous 3 competitions, partnering with Stewart for the first, and Dave for the last two. We've done well every year, and always improving from the last year. Together, Dave and I completed 132 routes in 2008. This year we are shooting for 150. So follow us this summer as we train and get ready for the greatest show in climbing!
We started training really this past Tuesday. We climbed in the gym and worked several routes that we know, plus a few new routes. We didn't push to hard to start with but worked on quantity. Once we were done climbing all of the routes that we wanted to, we finished the workout by climbing all of the walls that we hadn't been on yet. I didn't do a total route count, but I would say it was about 20 each for the day.
Today we pushed it a little harder yet. After doing four easy warm-up routes, we jumped on to our lead projects in the cave. I sent my project, "5 words for pumped" 5.10 b, on my first try today. I had tried it once the day before and didn't expect to send it today. But I made it to the roof and was still holding strong so I just kept going. Dave sent his project as well on his first go. It's a 5.10a called "Ghosts of Gotham", keepng with the Batman theme we've got in the cave right now. After those routes we ran more of the lead routes. I took a nice fall off of the roof and racked my right shoulder just a bit. I kept climbing, but it's hurting tonight. We pushed on through and ran 5 or 10 more routes until we were just about dead, and then finished off with the 6 minute ab workout. Then we celebrated the workout with a visit to Burger King and tried their new Steakhouse Burger. Damn good stuff.
The workout plan for the weekend is to get some cardio in at the least. I am heading to Horseshoe Canyon with the family, but the chances of rain are really good, so we will see if any climbing happens. Stay tuned!
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