Last 10 days, I haven’t been trying Perfecto Mundo. The weather conditions haven’t been good enough for sending the whole thing and I was definitely afraid that I would lose my fitness if I was still trying Perfecto Mundo with sheer stubbornness despite no chance of sending. Training works with a simple system - periods of more load and fatigue, and then peak period. I spent most of my peak period waiting for the better conditions to arrive, but they did not come. I did not want to waste more time and that is why I decided to start training.
Unfortunately, there are no indoor training facilities yet in Margalef, not even mentioning its accessibility in the time of pandemics. But there is a lot you can do on the rock, while still doing various exercises at the playground in the village, that serves my training purposes very well. I brought some equipment from home - TRX, therabands, mat and as an extra weight, I use barrels of water or big stones. I have been spending most of my evenings at the playground with my coach Petr, while climbing on the rock beforehand.
The trickiest thing is to substitute hard bouldering, which is in my opinion a key to at least maintain my maximum power. Despite Perfecto Mundo’s pumpy character, you still need a lot of maximum power because you do not only need it for the crux moves, but also in order to get as fresh as possible. Climbing gyms, most notably spray walls, have the advantage of plenty of holds, mostly skin-friendly, to come up with a plethora of hard and powerful moves. On the rock, it is much more complicated, especially if you are not in a bouldering area. Luckily, Margalef has plenty of routes that are short and burly. I spent a few days seeking these climbs and the most memorable was definitely the second ascent La Ley Indignata, 9a first ascended by Alex Megos. Very short route, featuring very distant two-finger pockets that looked like my absolute anti-style and it was very rewarding to get it done in a few tries.
Margalef also offers plenty of longer routes that I haven’t done yet, so I spent a few days trying to climb some of the 9a’s that I haven’t done yet. But this was tricky as some of these climbs are very sharp and splitting my fingertips could be devastating for many days ahead. That is why I also spent some time training on some of the routes that I have already done, that are more skin-friendly, and climbing them multiple times.
My training phase is slowly coming to an end in a few days, and hopefully, the conditions are turning for the better (the weather forecast looks a little more optimistic), so the time is coming to focus on the project again next week.
