Today I fulfilled my dream of sending Il Maratoneta, the legendary 8b+ in Paklenica!
It was bolted by Maurizio "Manolo" Zanolla in 1987, and in 28 years this is 6th send of this route, and 2nd croatian send after Ivan Lisica.
The name origin: Manolo was running a lot and on one run from Trieste to Paklenica he bolted the route and made few tries. He took rest and ran to Split and back, and after coming back he sent the Maratoneta. What a story!
The route is just perfect, 15 metres long, located on the back side of a fallen block and isolated from other routes. It's overhanging and seeks precise and sometimes long moves on really small crimps. All of the holds are on such perfect places like it's some artist's work. Every move is beautiful and I really enjoyed climbing it every time.
The only problem is it is extremely sharp, and I could do max 4 tries per day as my fingers would scream after that. But that gives some sort of charm to it, you come and you give it your everything if you want to do it. I often had to ignore the sharpness and do every move with max power, which was hard sometimes. Although Maratoneta is graded 8b+, it's very old grade and I'd say it could be harder, but anyway Maratoneta isn't climbed for it's grade but for it's status.
I wanted to do it before my 18th birthday and this was probably the last weekend to achieve that. Yesterday route was a bit wet but I still had few good tries. Today my first try resulted in falling at the very end of the hard moves. After that try my fingers were really damaged so I wanted to stop for that day because the pain was big. But thanks to Pevec, Čorko, Škalec and my father persuading me, I gave it one more try.
And that was the try I needed! Real battle with pain and pump, resulting in a send.
Now that I sent it I'm really happy to finally accomplish one of my dreams, but at the same time I'm a bit sad because I won't be trying Maratoneta anymore and I enjoyed every move in it. It's just the best route I know.
