Today we did a nice pre-turkeyday climb at Metro Rock. I was climbing mostly 5.9+/5.10 which felt pretty good until my grip strength gave out. There is a really nice technical climb in the far corner that Sam and Dave and I all worked... starts easy like a 5.8 and ends a 5.10+. Sam and Dave were showing good form and Sam's arm seems mostly healed.
Round two for MetroRock. I met Sam and David around 6:30 and Patti joined us around 7pm. We also had a fourth/fifth that Sam picked up while waiting for us to arrive named Dave. I climbed a quick 5.6 and then a LONG and exhausting 5.8+ as a warm-up and then stuck to 5.9s and 5.9+ for the rest of the evening. Sam climbed a bunch of interesting 5.9s and David and Kelly worked on some easy 5.9-s and 5.8s for Kelly. We all were a little tired (and probably post-christmas-meals heavy) but the climbing was good. MetroRock was definitely hopping, but it was apparently not nearly as bad as it gets on a non-holiday Thursday. Makes me wonder how busy The Rock Club gets on an average Thursday evening.
I did much better at the smeary 5.9 than I did on christmas eve and in general I was feeling a bit more on balance. I definitely need to work on weight distribution and quite a few of the routes set at MetroRock require you to partially layback or at least shift your weight off-center to make the next hold. Definitely makes planning interesting. They also appear to like cross-overs as I had to cross arms a few times. All in all when we left at 9pm we were exhausted and happy.
