By totally bombed it, I mean that I had a good warm up and did well on a bunch of 5.7's and 5.8's. I even beat the crap out of a hard 5.9. But then I struggled a bit on another 5.9 (although I managed to send it), and then I failed on a 5.10a. I just couldn't get past this one sequence, mostly for not knowing how to do it. With a little more height I could've mantled this one part, but I just couldn't manage it. I watched two other wonderful women do the route in two different ways, which inspired me to try and get past that part a third time. But as soon as I got up there, a familiar sense of impossibility swept over me again, and I couldn't make it work.
Asking someone to lower you when you haven't sent a route feels like one of the most humiliating things in the world.
What made it worse was that prior to my hiatus, I was the queen of climbing. On my last trip to the gym, I climbed a challenging 5.9 chimney route, then a 5.10a chimney route, and then a half slab/half vertical 10b. And my boyfriend, Tom, couldn't do it. It was the first time that I was able to climb a route that he couldn't do. It required flexibility on one particular sequence, and he couldn't move past it. As much as I felt bad that he was getting frustrated, part of me was ecstatic that I had managed a route that the tall and strong Thomas could not.
All in all, my bad day probably wasn't all that bad. But for some reason, it just felt like a huge step backward and I hung my head low as I left the gym. Hopefully, I'll do better today. *sigh*
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