Testing the waters

With the dreaded feeling of Sunday's Louis session being a big fluke, I returned to the cave via new Bizzle picking up Monsieur psyche and Hatch of Hatchatrocity fame up along the way.

We got there for a casual 2.15pm and warmed up feeling a bit shoddy whilst Hatch went in search of some big game hunting atop of the Orme.

I did the post crux to finish feeling sketchy as anything but it took only a mere 3 attempts to stick the crux again and climb to the finish.

I then set about just going for the redpoints but something would always go a tiny bit wrong, mostly matching the left undercut poorly, which meant a lot of energy sapping adjustments before I could position the feet and make an attempt at the crux slap to the lip.

I had 5 tries always hitting the lip but not having the beans to keep my right foot on. A brief rest and then the litmus test of seeing if the crux still felt possible with some fatigue. To my relief, I managed to catch it 2nd go and get to the finish yet again.

I went for a final attempt to see if I could go one better than last time, but I had ran out of steam and had to concede defeat for the day. It felt hard on the back and arms and I clearly could have done with more than 1 day of rest since my last session on it.

Mike managed to look really weak on hatchatrocity and ferrino, then with a bit of goading, he joined me on Louis and absolutely rinsed the start getting a French blow in on the 2nd move before getting confused with the crux, which he realised would involve some dynamic effort on his part.

We left just as the light faded and went back to the Hangar to join Matty D, Youngy and Laura in trying the black comp set from Friday. I was completely spent after managing 28.5 of them.

Looking forwards...

I had a brief chat with Dan and he agreed it would be a good tactic to try and link matching in to the undercuts, through the crux and to the finish, rather going for the redpoint every time, as I can do it fine in separate halves but have yet to stick the crux from the start.

Regardless of if I succeed or not this year, I am feeling a massive surge of motivation just at the right time and I know for sure, that I am capable of climbing something difficult at long last. Time to knuckle down and put the effort in and not accept underachievement... aka climbing for joy! In the words of a wise man, "success is temporary, failure is forever".

Lack of structure can lead to surprising results

No signs of improvement...

Since my last semi depressed blog entry there has been no real structure to my climbing or training and I have mainly just pottered at the hangar for the last few months after getting a years pass. There have been a few days out in Wales with little achieved bar a good session at tremeirchion with Alec getting 36 chambers and 22 chambers done. It took a return visit to the GOP to finish off a mere 7B+ called Smoke a bloke and I figured it was best to write off this year early having ticked a meagre 2 new 8th grade problems (both in the cave and long, so they don't really count for much).

A chilled end to 2013

I took last week off from climbing and had a lovely trip to Shropshire to visit Laura's parents and go to the German night market in Birmingham which featured great food, ale and live music. Me and Laura then went on to Carden park Spa in Cheshire for a decadent overnight stay of spa treatments, sauna, jacuzzi, fine dining, luxurious accommodation and a nice walk in the woods near to Beeston and bulkley.

We popped to Cheshire oaks to make inroads into the Christmas shopping when I received a somber text from Ian that the shop had been broken into and lots of gear had been taken. Gaz cleared the rest out back to beris and I popped over the next day to help take a new stock take and get some web based work for the meantime.

So after 7 rest days I arrived at Fatnecks ysgo bash. It was treacherous reaching the boulders and surprisingly dry for the first 2 hours or so before the squall came and engulfed us. We beat a retreat and went the pub. Day 2 was a write off with regular blasts of rain coming from sea mist/wind/the heavens.

Parisellas saves the day

Determined to climb on some dry rock, Mark and myself shunned the beacon and headed to Parisellas to find it in mint condition! After a brief warmup I thought it would be fun to see how much harder Louis Armstrong felt after basically no effort to get stronger in the last 9 months.

It took only 3 attempts on the crux move to stick on to it and breeze to the finish. I was rather surprised and decided the start will feel brutal still surely...

First go on the start and I got into the crux and hit the lip. I had another go on the start and got to the crux again only to mess around with the left undercut and tire myself out so holding the lip felt hard again.

I thought it would be good to see if the crux was still super low percentage, so pulled on again... And crushed the move, carrying on to the finish again.

It makes little sense to me, that I have my best ever session on Louis after no real training effort or progression in my outdoor climbing for what seems like a long time. Maybe there was something magical in that performance enhancing pre massage salt & oil scrub at Carden Park, or it could have been my body reacting to a punishing few sets of bicep busting preacher curls in the gym last week with some kind of super hypertrophy as the undercut moves felt piss compared to last time in the cave.

To see if it was some strange fluke, I'll be popping back down tomorrow to do battle once again and see if I can force this gangly, weak carcass into achieving what I was beginning to feel way beyond it.