I sent Wheaties!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
Better Eat Your Wheaties. Done.
Last Thursday may perhaps hold the most memorable send of all time for me. I finally (FINALLY!) completed a boulder problem I’d been dreaming about doing for a long, long, very long time: Better Eat Your Wheaties, v8. This is one of those climbs, maybe the only climb come to think of it, that I vividly remember walking up to for the very first time. I suppose most climbers have one of those moments at least once. First thought: What is THAT climb? Immediately followed by second thought: How hard is it? (Not because harder is better but because it’s nice to know if it’s in the immediate realm of possibility).
At the time that I first laid eyes on Wheaties it was not in the realm of possibility for me. It wasn’t even close. I was barely making my way to the top of v4’s and 5’s with a lot of work. Wheaties was a dream climb. A “someday” sorta climb. A “if I send this one I’ll be satisfied for life and will quit climbing and move back east” kinda climb. I’m pretty certain that on that first day I was standing there gawking at it I really believed it was a climb I’d never do because it was too hard. That day was November 20th, 2004. I know this because I’m an obsessive climbing nerd and keep a climbing journal.
One year later, climbing not much harder than v4’s and 5’s, I got on it for the very first time. It was a moonlight tour with Paul, our friend Grit from Germany, Tammy and Vince, and Sam and Ana. I remember Ana running up it and then insisting that Tammy and I give it a try. So we did. And we got our asses handed to us on that incredibly hard first move.
Two years after that (now the fall of 2007), a bit stronger and bit smarter on how to train, I went back to it to see how hard it felt. Four days on it over the course of four months and my assessment remained the same: yep, still too hard.
Then came our big trip in 2008 to Rocklands, South Africa where I sent my first v8, Minki. At this point I had a nice base of quality v6’s from a variety of crags and even a few 7’s. Now we’re talkin! But, before I could get back to Wheaties, along came Silas. I’ll take Silas over Wheaties any day.
Now it’s the Spring of 2011, with Silas toddling around under the boulders and me training like a madwoman to get back in shape ASAP. I stick the first move of Wheaties for the very first time. This is HUGE! The climb has now been unlocked and I start working it in earnest. But alas, summer comes too soon and it gets hot. And then but whom should come along after that: Ivan. And I’ll take Ivan over Wheaties any day.
Fast forward past all the getting back in shape again and it’s now the fall of 2013. I’m finally able to stick that first move again. Game on. I quickly start linking pieces of it together over the course of a few weeks and by December am giving it full-on sending go’s. I was truly convinced I could pull it off before the holidays. I was wrong. On our final day there before heading east for 3 weeks to lounge and gorge over the holidays, I fell off the last move.
So here we are now at the end of my Better Eat Your Wheaties journey. Nine years, 34 days of effort, 2 babies and a whole lotta late-night training later, I pull on and…
effortlessly…stick…every…single…move. A climb that had been so impossibly hard for so long now felt easy.
Pulling over the top of the boulder I was positively beaming. I could faintly hear Paul’s and a handful of other dude’s whoops and hollers below and may have uttered a little “wooo!” of my own. Standing up I almost got emotional as tears welled up in my eyes. But then I remembered the handful of dudes below, quickly composed myself, climbed down, and hi-fived the crowd. Wheaties is mine.
Cheers!
posted by arr
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