Climbed a 5.11!

It wasn't pretty at all, many many falls, and a bit of an assist from the belayer, but I got up a 5.11 today at metro rock! I was pretty psyched!! It was a good day of climbing - I started with a 5.8 that was one of the hardest climbs of the night because it was pretty burley at the top, then moved to a 5.9 which I did clean, then I moved to 5.10's. In total, I did 5 5.10's! 2 clean - 1 on auto belay (it took me several tries, but when I got it, it was super fun, would definitely retry), and 1 that I've done before, and really like. I also did one in the chimney with 1 fall, which is cleaner than the other two times I tried it. One that was really over hung with a billion falls, and a belayer who, when I yelled "take" was like "don't worry, you're safe." Not the brightest bulb in the bunch. I did one other that was pretty overhung, but by that point I had a new belayer who was a woman, and got it on the whole taking thing. 

The 5.11 was on slab - there were some moves that had pretty crappy hand holds, but if you got it just right, you could almost get a grip and move yourself up, until the next fall. Some of the folks in the meet up that I was climbing with were like "the biggest and best hold is near the top" and when I got close, I saw that there was this hold that was literally the size of the tip of my thumb. I was just like "are they kidding?" but it was hung in a way that you were meant to pinch it with your thumb and the wall/corner/arete. In retrospect, kind of cool. Anyhow, there was a degree of arm to the climb, and I felt pretty good about the exercise of it and the whole night. When I got home I ate some bread and cheese, just to make sure I don't lose weight and make it easier to climb.

I'm pretty psyched with how the climbing thing is going, and I love climbing at Metrorock all the time again!

Last week, on Wednesday, we did parkour on the fiedler bridge, which was a longer run to get to, but super fun once we were there. We did some climbing on the sides of the bridge, and then coach was like, just walk on the side of the bridge, and I did! At first, I thought there was no way I could do that, but actually the cement edges were like a foot wide, which you can pretty reliably walk on something that wide without falling because, gravity. So, I made up this little song that went "I'm walking along and it's not scary 'cause I've got gravity on my side." and I sang it over and over again, and actually made it across the entire river!

This weekend we are supposed to have a hurricane on Sunday, so definitely a bad day for Washington. I was thinking about tomorrow, and hurrying back, but it looks like next weekend might actually be nice, so that's the current plan. And, to keep climbing Friday night!