[AJM]

Sosomewhat unexpectedly I find I've booked myself a short (5 days) trip to Rodellar late September, so maybe 8-9 weeks away. Trying to work out what is the best way to use that training time. It's going to be a lot longer than the stuff I've done of late and moreconcerningly probably a hell of a lot more uphill too.

Things I've come up with so far, aside from preparing the ego for a damned good spanking, are:
- There's a 30 degree board at my local wall (TCA Bristol). Use it, lapping the easy circuits and trying to project the harder ones (and doing linkups of bits of them and all that)
- Lots of aerobic capacity style stuff, either steep trad (I figure youre on the rock for a while ahd getting and then shaking pump, so it counts?) or the usual indoor techniques
- Work on my weedy core
- Try and prepare for the "whole body experience" by upping the amount of weights, push ups and so on I do to prepare shoulders and whatever for the onslaught.
- Lose a bit of weight

Anything more venue-specific I'll have missed? Anything in general wrong with or missing from the above? Grades 7a-7b/+ I guess if it's relevant. I saw the "training for kalymnos" thread a while back but there were suggestions there that it was different because of the tufa rests and things...

Any advice welcomed...

Andy

[AJM]

Oh, and if anyone has any recommendations for routes at the 7b+ or 7b end of the spectrum that would be cool too - figure it's more important to know for stuff I might be looking to project rather than stuff I would be hoping to get faster...

[Bonjoy]

At that grade you aren't really pushing into the super long and super steep terrain that Rodellar is famous for. There are plenty of classics at that grade for a five day trip but they wont be notably longer/steeper than at many other euro venues.

Do a search and you'll find several threads with recomended routes for the area. OTTOMH Pince Sans Rire and Sopa De Adjo stand out as classics at 7b+.
Generally you want to concentrate on training for longish and pumpy without especially hard moves, bin everything which isn't focussed on that end. The key skills are efficient technique and the ability to spot and use marginal rests (mostly kneebars on tufa), and to still be able to push on whilst pumped for a lot longer than you might normally think possible.
I'm illiterate when it comes to training theory, so feel free to ignore, but I would suggest doing fairly steedy steep problems ending at a hold you can only just recover on, hang on this till you have recovered as much as you can then repeat to finish at the same rest, repeat. Tweak the length, difficulty of the problem and the marginality of the rest to simulate 30ish metre steep routes with lots of poor rests at grades increasing toward your target grade .

[AJM]

Cool, thanks! Some stuff to thnk about...

A