Scraping by and staying motivated

I've had a pretty uneventful last few weeks since we were at the Orme for Chezzie Si's birthday.

I am still trying to recover financially after returning from Italy and paying 2 months of overdue rent and bills..which has meant a lot of time spent at awful walls climbing centre slaving away for 3 weeks straight just to clear my negative bank balance and buy enough food to get back to something approaching a normal diet! (I had been living off beans and economy weetabix for a week, before pay day came).

I have resigned myself to not getting a summer holiday this year and am focussing my attention on saving up enough money to go to font again in October with the Liverpool crowd. To co-incide with this situation, the guru's training plan could not have been timed any better, so I began last Sunday with basic strength tests and Monday on the actual training. It is based on a 9 week cycle and largely indoors which will fit in well with my need to work a lot at the wall.

The highlights of the week were definitely my rest days sitting off with Stu (our new squatter) and eating steaks and cakes all day long to try and overload on calories and put a bit of fat back on after the awful week of near starvation that preceded this week! I also watched First ascent and thought it was brilliant (apart from Timmy O'Neill), getting me psyched to move over to Squamish or Yosemite for a few months to try some hard wall and crack climbs. I am most definitely green with envy of Esther at work going over to the States for a few weeks!

For now though I look forward to more sessions on the fingerboard and 45 board and will continue to stick religiously to the guru's plans. I am intrigued to see what it may do to my climbing by the end of it (and more importantly if I will be in crushing mode come font time).