On the Mend!

After some sage advice from the ukb forums and a chat to Pete Chadwick on the phone, I have nursed the left arm of weakness towards the road of recovery.

I basically did no climbing at all for 6 days whilst performing light weight exercises in work sat on my arse. These are all aimed at fixing the small tissue/tendons that support the major muscle groups in the arm which have apparently grown strong (a debatable point!) whilst the small bits have been on holiday, meaning imbalance and pain.

Anyway...

I tentatively arranged an outdoor rock climbing trip with my good friend Benedict and met him in a leafy Hartford village on Tuesday afternoon. The strong boys were heading to the cave but I couldn't quite face it just yet and it would probably set me back again in terms of recovering fully. The venue of choice was Harmer's Wood as I figured it was going to be relatively easy on the arms and a good finger workout as well as a test of footwork!

Upon arrival I was really impressed with the stand-out aretes and highball walls, all with nice flat landings in a fairly open plan space that felt quite peaceful.

A local guy turned up who was part of the local village team who had been working on making the area easy to access and family friendly. I just followed Ben around climbing almost everything and offering grades for each one (that somehow amazingly matched what himself and Andy had agreed on).

There were some really brilliant climbs from F5+ to F7B with the classics being The highball rib line, Queen of Hearts, Harmadillo and Baby Bloc.

At the end of our 3 hour session my fingers were truly destroyed and my toes ached as I found wearing super tight, thin 5.10 projects and standing on small edges made the toes work overtime.

The climbing was fantastic and very similar to Pex in places but a much nicer venue overall in terms of landings, lack of litter and no scallies (save for Ben and Chezzie Si).

I didn't manage one of Ben's harder lines and didn't get on the line left of Baby Bloc, so will most likely be going back again Tuesday next week to finish these off. It was nice to be climbing pain free again and should be good to go in the cave/s lakes again after Tuesday assuming all goes well.

Here is a local lady who turned up clearly psyched for some hardcore sandstone crimping:

June already

...And nothing of note achieved. I've been mainly working in the shop lately and nursing yet another left arm injury, so after an unproductive session at Pantymwyn belaying John up Grand Canyon, I took a couple days out and then spent the rest of the week carefully fingerboarding and seeing where I was. The result was weak in the fingers and unable to 1 arm deadhang!

After the last fingerboard session being pain free, I decided to test out the level of injury on the rock as myself, O, Pete and Si drove through torrential rain to a misty but dryish Llanberis pass. We warmed up around the roadside and I managed to just about beat the pump to crush Cave Route and Roadside Basic which both felt desperate!

Luckily the arm didn't seem to suffer other than a mega pump, so after a break to stare bemused at a large bus load of Polish tourists who ran about the boulders taking photographs of cloud and drizzle, I had a play on Diesel Power.

Despite having seen Mike climb it in about 20 mins last month, Owen didn't remember any beta at all, so I just got on with failing on every move for a good hour. I skipped past the first move as I didn't know the rules about where you start and also couldn't figure out where to put feet for most of the moves! By the end of this rather poor showing I had managed about 3 hand moves. It was quite condensed on the rock with the low clouds but I am in dire need of some foot beta and body tension.

After a bit of lunch I went over to spot Pete and Andy on Bus Stop. Pete managed to crush the first 2 moves but was struggling on the finish. I did it from a move in to try remember things for him and then decided to try something on Mr Fantastic that Dobbin had posted on his blog a while back. When bringing the left hand across to match on the Bus Stop holds, I kept my left foot pasted on the ledge and then brought the right foot across and pressed it into the roof just above the LF. This allowed me to easily take my left foot off and place it on the good spike and then bring the right foot down on to the polished dink and do the first move on Bus Stop (totally removing the desperate leg swing I had previously been fighting with!) . To try and keep things positive, it was shoes back in the bag and down to Pete's Eats for cake and a coffee.

Really struggling with motivation at the moment with being injured and weak most of the time and unable to train as it results in aggravating the left arm. This means when I get out, I'm generally pretty crap and feel like I'm going backwards from last year as opposed to improving.

I might take a big break during World Cup time and hopefully this will clear up lingering injuries so I can start training afresh after. News of a new dedicated bouldering wall opening in Liverpool is fantastic and it can't come soon enough!