Setting up this blog to track my progress over time in Rock Climbing. I’ve been climbing off an on for many years, but never seriously. I come from Brisbane, Australia, which is blessed with one of the best inner city crags in the world. Check out a picture of the cliffs at Urban Crag. My parents used to take us there on weekends when I was about 12 years old and I would spend my time traversing back and forth along the cliffs. Over the years after that I would occasionally go indoor rock-climbing, and at a school camp at age 15 I even set my own traverse route. Still, I never stuck with climbing, despite it becoming more and more accessible over the years. Other sports that I went through in phases were, inline skating, skateboarding, mountain biking, soccer, power lifting and distance running. I’m now 31 and have been climbing regularly for the past 4 months since emigrating to Houston, TX.
Since I was about 24 I have been going indoor climbing in short bursts, never more than once a fortnight, and usually only for short periods of about 3 months, after which I wouldn’t climb again for a year or two. In between I was doing power lifting and distance running. At 26 I ran a full Marathon, after training for about 18 months to that end. Running tapered off for me after that and I focussed on weight lifting again, which lead to power lifting, putting on a bit of muscle until I was around 78kg on average, or 170 pounds. I gained a lot of strength during this period up until I was 27, at which point I left my job to travel around the world for 18 months. Travel was not good to my body (many people find they lose weight whilst on the road), and I lost a lot of strength and weight, weighing in at around 150 pounds upon returning home. I hit back at the gym with power lifting and went through 2 more 3 month bursts of indoor climbing courtesy of the local gyms 10 trip groupon deal.
Late 2013 I went through a course to get trained to set up top rope anchors. I bought all the gear to go climbing regularly and we got in a fair few top rope climbs at Kanagroo point over 6 months. Some other work goals got in the way of us going more regularly, and I was topping out at around a 5.10 b/c difficulty on outdoor top rope.
Fast forward to an opportunity to transfer to the USA for work 6 months ago. My wife and I were looking to really get into climbing again as a fitness and social outlet. We got membership and started going on weekend trips to outdoor crags with new friends we have made here in Houston. Whenever I start climbing again after a break I usually progress pretty quickly back to a point where I have always stalled over the years, that is redpointing about 23 under the Aussie Ewbank grades, the equivalent of a USA 5.11c (or French 6c+). At a recent competition at our local gym I won the intermediate category (more luck than skill, as climbing any better would have pushed me into the advanced category) and most recently onsighted a 5.11c indoors, and onsighted a 5.10d outdoor on top rope.
This is the base that I am starting from.
Why 8a? A few illogical, but honest reasons first. 8a is the name of a website where many climbers input the routes they have climbed to form an overall score. It is called 8a, seemingly because that would be a baseline some would consider to be expert level climbing. Another somewhat illogical reason is that in a book I have recently read on training for climbing, the author noted that they believe 5.13c is attainable for the average person, given the right training. Beyond this, genetics starts to come into play.
More logical reasons for this goal are that, I am not getting any younger, and in 5 more years I will unlikely be able to attack such a physically taxing goal as this. I really enjoy the technical aspect of climbing and sport climbing over single pitches, and possibly 2-3 pitches is where I would like to excel.
Of course, a lofty goal such as this has to have intermediate goals, the first of which is to redpoint a 5.12a on a lead climb outdoors by the end of 2015. I’ll detail this more in my next post.
goal8a (5.13b/29) - Eye of the Tiger 
