Century Crack

It's hard to set a goal and not meet it.
Six months ago my girlfriend Ashley and I made an audacious goal, to climb the worlds hardest offwidth, the Century Crack. We spent several days a week, training on our wooden version of the climb, making huge improvements over time and becoming almost machine like climbers, and yet when it came down to it, we didn't send.
I've been asking myself the same question for the last couple of days, simply, "why?"
In the final days of our training, we were both climbing the equivalent of back to back Century Cracks without a rest, our feet never got pumped out, our fist stacks were strong, and our sit ups came with ease, had we not set ourselves up perfectly?
The answer, no.
Several factors lead to our demise, we were both still very tired from a big climb we had done four days earlier, we were both still fighting off a nagging head cold, but the final conclusion I've come to, makes the most sense. Climbing an eight foot wooden crack, is not the same as real rock, real rock has character, it flares and constricts, offsets, and breaks apart, real rock will get in the way of your butt, cut your shins open, and rain sand into your eyes.
I had developed tunnel vision, I focused so much on how the brits (Tom Randall and Pete Whittaker) had trained prior their ascent of Century Crack, I had forgotten about the two months prior to their ascent they spent climbing a massive list of some of the hardest offwidths in the United States, not only were they in perfect conditioning to climb the Century Crack, but they were also ready for any unknown factors the route could've thrown at them.
But now we know what we're up against, and instead of a big failure, I'm seeing our Century attempt as more of a learning curve. We need to prepare ourselves to climb not just a five inch crack, inverted for one hundred feet, but everything in-between.
Maybe I'll set our wooden crack between four to seven inches, invite some friends over and have them kick me, and throw sand in my eyes, while I practice inverted shuffling, or maybe I'll get out and climb all of those other routes leading up to Century Crack, and learn how to handle every possible variable I may face whether it be on Century, or maybe even the next big line.

                  (Photo: Ashley Cracroft stares up at the monstrous end section of Century Crack)