Planning a transitional and spring season for a Power Route

[Chris W]

A) My goal route for the spring is Flippin' the Bird 13 a/b/? My understanding is that it's basically a boulder problem on a rope, probably about half (or less) the length of my fall project The Streak. 

B) My brother is getting married down at the New on May 19th. I'm obligated to go to the wedding, since he's my brother. I still want to go on a week long climbing trip to the New this spring. It looks like the best thing, for my immediate family, is to plan my spring trip for May 13th through the 20th

C) I usually do a short "transitional" winter season, consisting of a full strength phase and short power phase. Normally I end this transitional phase a week before I start training for my spring season. I usually end my spring season around May 1st, because it starts getting too warm and humid for "performance" climbing. 

Now I'm trying to decide the best way to plan my transitional winter and full spring season. I could:

1) Keep my schedule the way it has been the last 3 years, since it's working so well. I would just extend my performance phase from 3 to 5 weeks to include my trip. I'd have to be careful not to injure myself when extending my performance phase that long. 

2) Lengthen my transitional winter phase. Try to boulder outdoors at least once per week during the winter phase. Skip my two weeks of spring ARC training to extend my transitional bouldering, and start my spring season with my spring strength phase. I could plan on either an extended performance phase, as above, or just push the whole season out a bit, which may mean my performance phase is a little warmer than I like. 

My thoughts with option 2 are that the extra bouldering would help develop movement skills, since our local diabase boulders are known for being technical wonders, and hopefully help develop more power. Plus it would get me out of the house a little more, since baby number 4 is due in 3 weeks. 

Any thoughts? Sorry if this is TL; please don't DR it. 

[MarkAnderson]

If it were me, I would do whatever resulted in the best conditions when working the goal route. I'd be very reluctant to delay the start of the season because my campaigns always seem to take longer than I think they will, and if that happened, then I'd be trying to send in rapidly deteriorating conditions, eventually running into a fixed stopping point (wedding). Option 1 provides a nice 2-week buffer in case you're close but haven't sent when your season would normally end. And, who cares what kind of shape you're in for the New? You can have a fun time there at any grade.

All that said, I think you could certainly benefit from some outdoor bouldering, physically, technically and mentally. But I bet you could follow your normal schedule and still squeeze in some outdoor bouldering if you really want to.

[Chris W]

What do you think about cutting out the ARC phase for the spring season to extend the bouldering options for the winter season? Good idea or bad idea?

I like the idea of keeping the schedule to correspond with the best conditions possible for the performance phase. That will start my PE phase in mid March, when it's still usually bitterly cold, with ice on a lot of the other routes in the quarry. If the route is as bouldery as it sounds, I'm probably going to want it pretty cold.

[MarkAnderson]

How long is your typical ARC phase?

[Chris W]

My normal Arc phase is about 2 weeks, same as the "advanced" plan in the book.

I've only been ARCing with my Spring and Fall seasons, so really only about 4 weeks a year. 

[MarkAnderson]

I wouldn't cut it out entirely, but you could just do 1 week.

[Chris W]

OK, thanks, I'll give that a try.