Don't Blog Drunk

I have just returned from my company's annual holiday party, where I had a very nice time with friends and co-workers, with live entertainment and a bar that happened to have both Maker's Mark AND Glenlivet as well as a really nice Dry Creek Zin, and after three of the former (with soda) and one of the latter, I am pretty much useless for getting any proper work done tonight, so I figured I would attempt to catch up on my blogging first, and then later try to vanquish some foes in Puzzle Quest. This should be interesting. I don't drink very often, and almost never more than one, as I'm very careful about driving safe. However, this party was walking distance from home, and I decided to let my hair down a little. There is irony there, but you would only recognize it if you knew I was balding.

I am very sore today. Yesterday's WOD kicked my ass, in particular the KB Swings and the Jumping Squats, such that stairs and...well, movement in general are a challenge. However, due to the aforementioned holiday partying, I knew I would be unable to attend Social Climbing with the CFEB crew tonight, so I scheduled some morning climbing with Tor.

10a(o), 10b(o), 10c/d(f+), 10a/b(o)

I'm actually pretty surprised I did as well as I did, considering how beat-up I felt this morning. Usually, Monday morning climbs are more of an exercise in humility than any other sort of exercise. The 10a was a tease, with a promise of some nice book stemming that it didn't actually deliver. The 10b was...pretty forgettable, really - I remember a lot of negative incline, but big holds that made it fairly straightforward. Two-thirds of the way up the c/d I was cruising, and thinking to myself that I was some pretty hot shit, and then I hit the crux. Took me four tries to get past that bastard - just a small roof, but no feet where they needed to be and nothing but a three-finger hold and a sloper to pull yourself up - it felt like a brute strength move, and no matter how I tried, I couldn't find a graceful or efficient way past it. Now totally pumped, I dropped down to an a/b for the final climb, which was nice and challenging enough to promote technique without being so hard as to spit me off.

Two moments this morning made me quite happy. One was Jim - a fellow crossfitter and also routesetter - proffering his opinion that the 11a that I climbed last week was "a very hard 11a." The other was Tor, my climbing partner who is currently working 11b's, falling off said 11a several times, and also proclaiming it very hard. So that means that the one 11a that I have managed to complete thus far is a HARD 11a. So...ha! Whatever that's worth. Had I onsighted it, I would probably be a considerably bigger bad-ass, but if I could onsight 11a's, I probably wouldn't be spending so much energy crowing about getting to the top of one.