Yesterday I did lead my first 30 meters pitch (Girotondo, 5c in Finale Ligure) that’s quite another level of scary compared with the ~15 meters stuff I was used to, and quite literally “pushing your comfort zone”.
When you see the last quickdraw you placed 3 meters below you (and the ground 20-something) and the next bolt just a couple of moves away.. just a couple too much, all fibers in your body tell you “give up”, fingers are starting to slip, they want to slip.
But you really rather not want to give up, because again, the last quickdraw you placed is 3 meters below you, so the fall will be very long (and scary, and potentially painful), and because what the hell, you came all the way up there, just to give up?
You just say fuck pain, fuck the fear, and just keep moving forward, one slow move at a time, just try to clip a quickdraw to one last bolt, and then I’ll maybe give up there, after all even if I fail, yes the fall will be long and scary and potentially painful, but at least I know I failed trying. All the safety precautions were taken (is a surprisingly safe thing to do, once you go manically through the checklist, it’s a *very* security conscious community) so while accidents do happen, usually the “worst thing that can happen” is “not very much”. In that controlled environment you learn to replace pretty quickly the “should do this”, “should have done that when I could” with the “just go for it”.