There are a few times in my life that I have spent months, and even multiple seasons trying to do a hard climb. From the outside, rock climbing projects are pretty boring to watch come to fruition. There is the training through the winter and figuring out which shoe seems best. Learning how to do moves, rest periods between tries, trying to preserve skin. Do I climb early in the morning? Late? When it is overcast? Come back in winter?
I track bodyweight and energy availability. I get serious about sleep. I limit all possible negative influences on my climbing performance. In this, I am not unique. I know dozens of athletes that do the same for everything from a 1-rep max effort at the gym to a citizen's 5k to trying unclimbed lines in the Karakoram.
The thing that is most interesting is the huge level of focus and stress around performance. For some, any stress at all seems like a negative. For me, and for so many athletes, it is a channel to supercharged efforts.
Day after day, I'd get to the crag and warm-up, try my route, and look for little progresses. I'd wonder why this part felt harder today or if the way I did a certain move was the best method. I'd look for gains in stamina and in strength and wonder if another try today would be a positive.
One particular climb saw me pushing hard to beat the Wyoming winter closing the road to the cliff. I was just so close...and then the gate was locked for the year. Could we ski up? Walk the two hours to the crag? Instead, I spent the next seven months reviewing video, training specific strength, and hoping for a mild spring.
On that climb, my seven months of agony paid off. The day the road opened, I went up alone to check out some moves while rope soloing and everything was just right. Two days later, I went up in the evening with my friend Mike and it came together. I felt prepared and strong and confident. I knew the route even better than the last fall. I climbed through the hard part near the bottom, and before I was even 1/3 of the way up the route, knew for certain I had it done.
Back on the ground we celebrated. For weeks, I was congratulated by friends. It was the hardest climb I'd ever done, and yet I knew that I could have gone just that much harder.
If there were an exact duplicate of that climb, but with slightly harder climbing in the easy parts, I could have done it. If the hardest move were just a bit harder, I could have done it.
And the process of engaging with the huge objective and wanting it so bad lasted so long compared to the feeling of doing it...we realize that the struggle is the real reward. When we're in it, we think we want it to end. And only when it ends do we realize we were thriving on the journey.
I remember a zen koan about how the steel in a sword thinks it is being tortured when placed in the forge, but when it comes past the fire and hammer and whetstone, it finally understands.
I desperately hope I am never satisfied with just going out and doing things within my grasp. I fear the life of small hills, big handholds, comfortable couches, easy conversations, and books full of words I easily understand. The proudest moments of life are the ones that come after struggle, and the happiest moments are often right in the middle of that struggle.