Pacing Climbs

[kila5454]

    First off I'd like to blatantly spray and appreciate the authors. I just completed my first strength and power cycles, and am dieting as well. Previously, I had only climbed two 5.12s on sport outside ever. I was able to send two 5.12a's on my first allotted day of outdoor sport climbing yesterday. Climbs that had previously crushed me seemed to be laughably easy.

    My question is about pacing during a day at the crag. Do you just time climbs with regard to shade and temperature? Yesterday, I worked the routes I climbed in the shade, but sent them in the sun because it was the only option. 

    How can you know when you are burned out? I had to try one of those climbs 6 times before I sent it, but it was short.

    It seems a waste to climb moderates, when I want to project hard routes. Do you lay off moderates as well?

    How many hard routes do you project in a single day visit to an area typically?

    Overall I am just curious about the technique for planning and progressing through climbs on a day to the crag. 

    Thanks. 

[MarkAnderson]

That's always going to be personal, based on what works best for you and what your goals are. For me, I'm usually at the crag to work a single hard-for-me route. Everything that happens at the crag revolves around that objective. So I figure out the best time to work my project, and then I back out everything from there. For example, if my project gets shade until noon, I might plan a schedule like this:

8-8:30: warmup on 1 or 2 routes (or maybe multiple laps on a single route).
9-10am: 1st attempt
10-11am: Rest
11-12: 2nd attempt

I wouldn't do any climbing after that, unless I was rope-gunning for someone else (which I would try hard to weasel out of).

If I were NOT working a hard route, I would probably do more warmups and more attempts, either onsighting or working things I expect to send ~second go. A day of onsighting at The Red, or another non-powerful, skin-friendly venu might include 10 goes, including warmups.

[jetjackson]

Mark - under that schedule, do you do another warm-up before the 2nd attempt, or do you think the half hour warm up at the start of the day leaves you good to go?

[MarkAnderson]

No, just the initial warmup. It's plenty good.

However, if my burns are shorter than an hour, I may rest less (but rarely less than 30 minutes). FE, if my first burn was 30 minutes, and I didn't get too worked, I might rest 40-50 minutes. In one case my first burn was like 15 minutes, and I think I rested 25 minutes or so.

It also depends on the route and where you are on it. If you're really just bouldering on the thing, with minimal linkage, you don't need a ton of rest between goes. Once you're climbing 60+ consecutive moves, with 15 minutes of unbroken TUT, getting pumped out of your skull, you're gonna need a lot more rest. And a route like that probably isn't super powerful, so it's not the end of the world if you're a little under-warm for your second go.  I've rested as long as 90 minutes between goes on routes like that, with no ill effects.

[jetjackson]

Good to know.

Weather was shocking here in TX over the weekend, so I went to the gym to work on my head game. I'd been hanging out to jump in this 5.12c, so I could work moves at my limit, above clips. It was busy and I had to camp out for this route - in the end there was an hour between my last route, and jumping on this 5.12c. I didn't feel the warmest getting back on, and it had a full crimp move, that seems to have inflamed an old finger injury slightly. I was thinking it might have been that 1 hour break between routes that did it.