Shit indoors

Just about sums it up!

I went up to Newcastle on Friday with my fellow Hangar Team mates to take part in the ASBO comp. I was hoping to improve upon my luke warm performance in the Hangar one and get into at least the final.

Well I climbed like a muppet and basically fell off three very easy qualifiers on vertical walls and slabs! It took 4 goes to do a mantle and despite flashing every other problem down in the pool area, these earlier errors cost me dear and I finished well outside the top 5! Probably out the top 10 and got beat by Sean, Ged and Michael.

Comp punter!

On to the final and Sean and Ged represented us taking 5th and 6th place respectively in the men's. A disturbingly strong Nige Callendar took the title back flashing everything in the final.

For the Women's a local lass retained her title just ahead of the steely fingered Karin Magog and our team mate Becky came 4th in her first comp, a great effort.

We went out for a filthy kebab afterwards to punish the body some more and finished off with various fine whisky's round at Ged's place.

The next morning was a pleasant affair with Nige being our mid morning breakfast delivery service, carrying wonderous gifts such as bacon and bread.

We shot up to Bowden and found it in great condition with a nice breeze keeping it cool and not overly sweaty.

We warmed up around Transformer and I managed to flash every variation on that bit of rock before doing the cool easy highball Brutally Handsome with Ged over to the left.

We moved down crag and as the others went off to try some high stuff, I crawled under the roof and got stuck into V Crimps, getting it done in about 3 attempts.

I went over to Vienna and managed to fall off after getting right over the top of the hold several times as it was super greasy and then the rain came!

We bailed under the V Crimps roof and had some lunch whilst people complained of various aches and skin issues caused by the comp.

As a rewarm up I managed a flash of the Cave Central LH line which climbed superbly well and then had a look at Sprung.

It looked very flashable so I got it matted out, put a decent pair of climbing pumps on and pulled on. It went smoothly until I crossed over from the sharp crimps to the left hand edge but went too high and right on it and couldn't hang the bit of nothing I had. I pulled back on and then pissed the move and to the end, shame!

A couple more goes to the same point and my skin got way too thin as arms got tired and people got a bit bored of shivering in the rain.

We packed up and then went back to Ged's via Morrisons where we purchased and then consumed vast amounts of garlic bread/pizza/ice cream and headed back to the pool.

Back to training on Monday and hopefully I can cure this habit of falling off easy vertical walls/slabs as the steep stuff seems to be in working order. It's obviously fun to be climbing ok outdoors but I'd love to be less shit at comps!