Si's Birthday

Just about recovered from the weekend!

We had a great time in Wales with trips to the RAC, Porth Ysgo and the Cromlech boulders, with a lot of people climbing really well.



I managed to work out a good sequence on Howling Hound at Ysgo (something I had tried and failed on, on my previous trip) and it went quite easily! It saw a fast repeat by quite a few of us! The weather was a bit sweaty but manageable and it was nice to go back and retro flash Fast Cars, Jaw Breaker...etc as well as Jets to Brazil, a quality problem next to Jaw Breaker.



Still have nemesis problems of Foam Party (any variation!) and Popcorn party which I may never try again, the pain is horrendous :(


With skin getting spanked I took it easy for the rest of the day and we all went back to Aberdaron for Fish and Chips then beers at the pub and the bunkhouse which was an extortionate £15 a night for B&B (self service cereal and milk!)

Sunday was a chilled day at the RAC followed by a good time at the Cromlechs. Mike was crushing everything as usual and it was good to see someone send Bus Stop so I could get some top out beta! Finding the second and third moves fine, just had no feel/energy for the first move which feels desperate at the moment. Looking forwards to getting back on it asap and getting it wired from the second move to topping out. Then it's work out the best way of doing the first move. I'm torn now between working on this or Rockattrocity...oh to live in N Wales!

Tuesday Night

I had a really nice day yesterday, 'working' at the wall and eating well, as well as doing a bit of hold cleaning/chatting to customers!

I later went into town and bought some shiny new trainers and a long sleeved top in the sale, which will be ideal in the cool temps in Wales this weekend.

After satisfying my shopping needs, i went the Dispensary with Ricky Hatton and we crushed a lot of moves! Once warmed up I got on my power endurance circuit and having only been able to add 3 moves on to a single lap last time (x5), I crushed 2 linked laps +3 moves! Roughly 29 moves and about Route 7c/+ in intensity :D I don't know where the hell this came from, as I pathed the rest of the laps with shorter rests than last week.

So... the time has come to move on to the harder circuit now and see how I fare in the coming week. Hopefully a month of steep circuits and continued fingerboard/footless bouldering will get me in prime condition for when the cave dries out.

Feeling good today and will probably do some weights followed by a power session at the board on Thursday. Then its rest up on Friday for a weekend of Porth Ysgo & Ogwen :)

Rain

Well it's been a pretty uninspiring last couple of weeks with horrendous weather and much wishful yearning for dry rock and trips abroad. I haven't been outside for almost 2 weeks and have been mostly messing about indoors doing some general bouldering and not psyched for much at all.

I got fed up of going to walls and sorted myself a new key for the Dispensary (a training venue we built around March 07'. I hadn't used it in about 6 months or so, maybe longer, so wasn't expecting too much in terms of performance. I was quite happy to get a good 2-3 hour session out of it including 5 complete laps of a 14 move circuit that felt like it really did some good!


The hallowed board

I think my biggest failing last year and on my current project in the Cave is clearly power endurance and early fatigue on days out, where i will be quite limited in terms of decent attempts at problems or just in terms of recovery rates and volume. I think 1-2 sessions per week working on my PE over the next 4 weeks should hopefully give me a good boost and rest my tendons from always trying crimpy 3-4 move problems at or beyond my limit!

Round at Tom's yesterday, I also rigged up a pulley system and had a good assisted 1 arm deadhang workout on small edges which seems to combine well with pressups and core work.

I'm quite looking forwards to training hard this coming week before Si's birthday trip to Wales and also Mike's stag week away in France in early February. Hopefully the gains will come relatively fast from trying something different for a change and the weather will play ball for once! :)

p.s. With not much else to do, i popped into town to spend some Waterstones vouchers and came across a book by Katie Brown (she of X games/Pilgrimage fame) called "Vertical World" which features lengthy interviews with well known US climbers. It's quite inspiring to read with lots of history, opinions and many good photographs, so I'll look forward to reading the rest of it this week!

08 off to a flying start

It's good to start 08 injury free and psyched for my goals!

I was really looking forwards to a trip to font with The Bear, but rain put a stop to it and i went with Si and Tom to stay over with uncle Andy for 3 days of shitstone ledge shuffling!

Wednesday was great as we went to Crag Y and crushed some quality 7A-7B's, Si got real close on a highish 7A that he will undoubtedly tick next time we go.















Thursday was a bit mad with heavy snow covering the Peaks, and we trekked over to the Plantation to find about 3 salvageable problems. While the others played about on the Green Traverse, I ate all my food and took some photos! The food woke me up a bit and I ventured over to try Brad Pitt with Rich.



The top holds were wet but all the start and ramp were boners with great friction, so we cleaned off the top holds and let that psycho Rich run across the ice-topped boulders to get a mat in place. Spent about an hour on it and me and Rich could both get into the rail, but matching comfortably proved a bit hard! Fatigued quite fast on it, so in the end we went off to try Deliverance which was also snow topped and had bad ice and water problems on all the footholds! Gave it a few goes anyway and got very close even without being able to use the left foot at all, so quite looking forward to getting back there soon.



Since then, I haven't done much save work all weekend at Awful Walls to earn some $. Felt good on the fingerboard yesterday, and had a lazy day today. Tomorrow is looking bad, so me and the Hitman are heading the Cave and i can hopefully get stuck back into Rock Attrocity! Hopefully all those mince pies haven't affected things too much.