Friday, March 7, 2014

Control-Alt-Delete

In June, 2013 I began a nearly impossible (for me) birthday challenge: campusing 1-5-8.5 on 1" rungs at Moon spacing (22 cm.) I also began exchanging emails regarding training advice with Steve, Micah, Will, Hans, and Normal Guy. Since tracking, discussing, and recording the logic behind various approaches to my workouts seemed like most of the work involved in writing a blog, I decided to restart this sucker. (I made 3 posts back in 2007.)
   Training is about the future, but I'm going to start with some history. Partly because it does contain the training articles I wrote 20 years ago, but more importantly, it's a lost part of Santa Barbara climbing history - and a very influential one at that: Allez Magazine.
   Allez was started by Steve Edwards, Aaron Greene, and myself in 1994. It was everything a climbing magazine should be: funny, irreverent, and honest. Steve and I were always strongly influenced by the powerful British and German climbers of the 90's - and that is heavily reflected in the magazine - not to mention almost all the climbs Steve and I established. Twenty years is a long time for such a young sport, so clearly, many things seem dated. Still, it gives some interesting insight into the state of climbing at the time - the V scale was not even commly used. Other topics, like Steve's emphasis on bouldering, were quite futuristic. Bouldering was much less popular back then and Steve (and crew) had a massive impact in developing Santa Barbara's bouldering. It's nice to see the renewed search for hard or untouched bouldering by Andy Patterson, Thomas Townsend, and Dean Privett, among others.
   So without further ado...