On Saturday I raced in my first triathlon. I participated in the Big Rock Super Sprint Triathlon held at Lake Perris which consisted of a 400 yard swim, 11 mile bike ride, and a 3 mile run. Luckily for me, the race started at 7:30 am which means that I finished up just after 9:00 and still had plenty of time for some climbing. Since the race was held at Lake Perris, I just had Amy bring the climbing gear when she came to watch me, and then we headed over to the other side of the lake to climb at Big Rock. I feel bad because we haven't taken many climbing photos lately, and Amy forgot to bring the camera, so here is another pictureless post.
When we arrived at Big Rock there was a big youth group there, but fortunately, they were only taking up two routes, The Trough, and Wedunett (two of our least favorite routes at Big Rock). I felt like we haven't climbed Boogaloo direct (5.9) in a while, so we decided to start with that. Variation to Boogaloo is a pretty fun route that sports three bolts in about 95 feet and has the crux right at the first bolt. After the crux the route continues at about 5.7 for most of the rest of the way with a single 5.8 move right after the third bolt. I ran up the route redpointing it easily, then Amy TR'd the route. Next Danny really wanted to climb, so we put his harness on and had him climb the route. He needed some help getting through a couple of the harder sections, but overall he did great. I can certainly see that he is improving a lot. When he got to the anchors, he didn't want to come down alone, so I climbed up to him and we lowered off together.
For our second route we just moved one route over to Variation to Boogaloo (also 5.9), and a route the it seems like we've been climbing quite frequently when we go to Big Rock lately. This route follows 4 bolts up the rock for a full 100 feet, and again, the crux is right at the first bolt. The natural line of the route starts just left of the first bolt, then traverses right into a seem at the first bolt, but I decided that I wanted to try a more dirrect start up to the first bolt. Doing this direct start felt like it bumped the rating up to about 5.10b, and really made the route more fun and interesting. I once again redpointed it without any problem, and Amy once again TR'd it cleanly (doing the direct start as well).
By now the sun was starting to creep over the top of the rock and it was getting hot, but I wanted to do something easy before we left so that we could see how Danny would do on something easier. We decided to run up a 5.6 called Puppy Dog for our last route. Puppy dog climbs past three bolts in 100 feet, once again with the crux being right at the first bolt, then it just gets progressivly easier and easier the higher you get until you can pretty much just walk up the last 10 feet to the anchors. I ran up the route, then Amy decided that her feet were kind of hurting, so she decided to TR the route in tennis shoes which gave her a bit more of a workout than she had initially thought, I guess tennis shoes aren't the best for slab climbing. After Amy got down we tried to get Danny to climb, but he wasn't really in the mood. He climbed up about 10 feet before he decided that he just wanted to come down, and that was it for our day of climbing.
It ended up being a short and very easy day of climbing, but I think it was just right after doing my triathlon. Now I'll have to start training so that I can actually get a decent time in the next triathlon I decide to do.
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