The Terminator, posing as a Barbarian, paraphrasing Genghis Khan, answered this question best:
And it was with that guidance and philosophy I entered the 2015 Pumpathon.
The Pumpathon, a charity competition at The Circuit Gym in Portland, is a race to climb as many boulder problems as possible in three hours. Its a challenge of strength, strategy, stamina, and pure drive to break past all pain and physical limits to keep on climbing. At stake was my honor (having won last year and bragged about it for 12 months), and a grand prize of a year-long membership! Losing was not an option.
To secure my place in history, I trained like a mad man (went to the gym a couple times), watched my nutrition (carbo loaded with beer and bagels) and enlisted the help of a world famous route coach (I trained him two minutes before start time, but he had a clipboard. #PRO)
Myself and Dylan Kruse, renowned route coach and caddy
Most importantly, we had matching "Go Big or Go Home" Star spangled outfits. Did it help me climb better? No. But it let everyone know i wasn't messing around- mental games, like the Mongols. Also its good for my modelling career.
At the start gun we were off like screaming bald eagles across the sky, red white and blue streaks zooming around the gym at break-neck speeds, a flag-bearing force like nothing the gym had seen before! The strategy was simple, go from one wall to another climbing every route graded V5 and under as well as easy V6s. Easier routes I could speed through, harder routes I would have to slow down. I pulled, pushed, danced, and jumped my way up and down route after route, quickly settling into a pace of "holy crap i dont know if i can keep this up" but I knew I had too.
A few of the competitors I destroyed in my wake:
A man in leapord skin must be taken seriously!
Cherubic child or world-class climber? I couldn't take the chance to find out, she had to be defeated at all costs.
Sumo wrestlers are real athletes who do real sports, I had to watch out
At the two-hour mark I realised how grueling this competition is. The challenge is just as great if not greater than any olympic-distance triathlon I've done. The skin on my hands was going raw, I was tired, and muscles from my fingers, up my arms to my shoulders and across my back were all locking up and cramping. But the pain is part of the incredible joy of endurance sports- its that moment of triumph while completely exhausted that makes me feel like a badass. Its that barbarian scream from deep in my gut as I claw my way up route after route that comes from a primal joy I find in few places.
Thats me, im the guy in tights, bearing down on a V5 as my fingers lock up
My efforts and preparation indeed paid off! Yay! I won and completed a total of 177 routes, about ten of them were V6, 20 were V5, and the rest was every single VB-V4 in the gym. I'm proud, I had a lot of fun and I worked hard. Now all joking aside and getting serious, what I am sincerely most of proud of was my friends, colleagues and families for donating a few cents for every route I completed. Together, we raised over $600 for Escalando Fronteras, an awesome organisation using climbing to help at-risk youth in Monterey, Mexico. Thank you all so much. Please do check out their website, and if you've been motivated by my antics at all, please consider making a donation. I'm so happy i could turn my prideful, bombastic hobbies into something good for other people.
Get out there people! Crush your enemies and see them driven before you, take yourself seriously, look like you aren't, try to do some good, and make sure you are having a load of fun. If you enjoyed this, or even if you hated it: Like and share, like and share, comment, and then like and share some more.
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