Pro-Sports

When I met up with C for climbing a few days back, she told me about a conversation she had with one of the Camp5 staff after our previous climbing session when she had stayed on after I left to warm down on a few auto-belay routes. Apparently the person she spoke to was a former staff member at Summit and had heard a comment I made when I was still actively climbing. The comment went along the lines of, “Let’s do all the routes today.”

I honestly don’t remember saying anything remotely close to that for even at my peak climbing performance, I had never been able to clean every single route in Summit.

Another comment C had heard was about the way I made climbing look easy. There were also a couple of times when I fell on a route and C mentioned she couldn’t understand why because I looked very comfortable on the wall.

Perhaps it is my countenance that is deceiving. For instance, I saw a picture taken of me during the Malakoff race when I was riding down the stretch adjacent to Merdeka Square; in it, I appeared to be riding leisurely as if I were on a Sunday bike ride rather than a 45km bike race. The funny thing is that I distinctively remember the pain I felt during the race. It was anything but a Sunday ride for me.

It appears that there is a climbing myth surrounding me that I don’t seem to be able to live up to. Sometimes I feel almost embarrassed to hear C lavishing me with compliments about the way I climb. She’ll look at all the difficult routes and think that I can climb anything. Her faith in me is both flattering and disconcerting at the same time.

I know it’s possible to climb better if I made it an obsession again. The problem is that I am not sure if I can give the sport the kind of time I need to climb like that. There are other demands for my time that prevent me from devoting every spare minute of my life climbing. That was the only way I knew how to get better – if you put in the time, you reap the results.

What if there was another way? What if I could improve my climbing without spending every spare minute of my life on it? What would it cost me? Is it a price I am willing to pay? Looks like I have some food for thought…

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