Friday, March 14, 2014

Let's Go Scrubbin'

I had completely forgotten the poem Todd Mei wrote for Allez's second issue; for most newcomers to the Owl Tor, it's as appropriate today as it was 20 years ago. I wish there was an equivalent to the "News" section; Climbing used to have a similar item for the major climbing areas, but I think that's been gone for a long time. It helped me identify who did the second ascent of Chips Ahoy: Ian Vickers. He and Paul Twomey were visiting from Scotland; they did a lot more drinking than climbing when they stayed with us. Ian had onsighted 13c at the time, so onsighting a 12d would have been a warm-up. My training article seems a bit erratic; but overall, the theories and principles haven't changed much. The addition of Belt as a writer for Allez was huge.
   Unfortunately, there were only 5 issues of Allez. The fifth was published only online and has been lost forever. Issues #3 & #4 will be posted on the next two Fridays, and then I will actually post about training. My approach is going to be very simple: Step 1: statement of my goal. Step 2: what I did to train for it. Step 3: statement of results. Step 4: my interpretation of why the results happened. Although, I'll start with an introductory piece on basic theories, I'm not going in that direction overall.


On another note, I was excited to see that The School Room has been reborn. The Brits have always focused on power; but more importantly they're funny. My favorite part is that instead of trying to make it "better" with cutting edge technology and designs, they recreated the original facility. Exactly what I would have done - rad! I always wanted to visit the U.K. just to go to The School Room, and now maybe I will. Here's one of my heroes, Ben Moon, training at the old School Room. I'm still chasing the campusboard achievement he did 20 years ago: 1-5-8.5.