Strawberry Pencil Pick Me Up - Rock and Ice article 1

Increasingly we see evidence of a movement to analyze, to set goals, to construct plans and strategies. To perform at your top level you can’t turn up unprepared; in today’s climbing world that just wouldn’t cut it.

So what does preparation look like? It comes in many forms from athletic competence to mental strength, from a well-timed ”peak” to a balance between training and rest. These aforementioned skills are all grafted out in the weeks, months and years before a climb, but what can we do to get that extra 2% on the day?

Last month my vital last minute preparation came in the surprise form of strawberry flavor, pencil-shaped sweets.

Rewind a couple of days and you’d see me pumped out of my brains 226 feet up a 230-foot single pitch sport route. I’d been on the route for an hour and was seriously hitting a wall. The rope drag by that point was epic and I couldn’t clip. I was on big holds trying to shake out and recover…the good aerobic capacity I thought I had cultivated decided not to show up to the party, or at least not to stay long. My legs were shaking—you know, the sewing machine dance. Only a couple of moves remained before I could mantle the crag and top out the iconic route of Totally Free II (8b/5.13d) that climbs the entire length of Malham Cove, (Yorkshire, U.K.) in one pitch.

But my body said no, not this time. I pushed on past the clip, elbows by my ears, one last-ditch effort before I was falling through the air.

Exhausted and depleted, I looked to analyze. What went wrong up there? How could I affect change in that situation? Something was missing from my strategy.

Performance nutrition for me has always looked wholesome. It’s been a frighteningly British middle-class journey of salmon and quinoa, kale and broccoli, single origin coffee, chia seeds, boiled eggs, avocados and homemade “healthy” snacks. My fridge is like a patchwork of health food adverts; the macros in my meals are planned and tailored to meet a specific demand.

But that day I had needed more than well-timed whole grains and oily fish could offer. I needed extra energy up there and I needed it fast. I was ready to try a new tactic.

Going to the sweets aisle in the supermarket felt like an exhilarating trip to the dark side: this was not my normal habitat. It was bright and sickeningly colorful, the options were endless. Fizzy, fruity, chewy; I was out of my comfort zone. The flavors were alien to me so I picked at random: strawberry pencil sweets (a distant British relative of the Twizzler). I read the ingredients list … all the bad sounding things. Perfectly luminous and flamboyant, I took them to the checkout.

Fast-forward a day and I was back at the crag, standing at the foot of Totally Free II. Looking up it seemed a long way to the top but this time I had extra ammunition. I checked my knot; chalked my hands, signaled to my belayer that I was safe and ready to climb. It was time.

To the casual observer, nothing had changed but I had a plan and it didn’t involve additional fuelling on the ground, that wasn’t enough last time. Oh no, this time I was taking my dark magic bullet up the route with me … I had strawberry pencil sweets tucked in my sports bra.

Whenever there was a rest I reached down and took out a sweet or two. The sugar stops became like a series of punctuation marks, moments of weird juxtaposition between guzzling junk food and engaging with my physicality and the rock. I’ll admit I had a few giggles at the absurdity of what I was doing; this was the most novel use the upholstery of my upper half had ever offered.

To cut a long redpoint story short, I snacked my way up the 230-foot route. I didn’t hit a wall. I didn’t get the shakes. Of course, this anecdote, my observational study with a single participant, does not signal cause and effect. My beloved strawberry pencil pick-me-ups may have had nothing to do with the outcome but I like to think they played a role, and they’re likely to find their way onto my shopping list again.

Smiling, I topped out, untied and dropped my rope to walk back down the crag, albeit with a bit of a stomachache.