sunny side up

Rupert sent me a text message on reading my last post. A précis of its contents is roughly "cheer up". Perhaps my last post was a bit gloomy. In the spirit of being cheerful, here are all the lovely things about my holiday.

We've had a great time in Rodellar; it's perhaps the most beautiful climbing area in Spain, and at this time of year the leaves are turning. The tall poplars lining the gorge are spectacular. Yesterday I was lucky enough to find Coliseum dry (enough) and put it to rest, after getting smacked around by it on my first day here. It's nice to see that you've got the knack of a place during a trip.

There's been lots of chums out here as well. Dan Walker & his beau Emma provided company and word games; Paul & Nat and Neil & Ruth were out here too. They've been great company and inspiration, the girls in particular have been very impressive; totally going for it. Jules has been ticking 7c's in a day with comfort, Nat and Emma have both broken new ground and Ruth has made a really impressive flash of Orient (7c/+) at Terradets.

On our last night, Jules and I celebrated our wedding anniversary in a hotel in the beautiful village of Alquezar.

All in all it's been an amazing trip, and has provided me with some great memories and some great ticks. Can't believe I'm now home.

It's so depressing.

instant karma's gonna get you

Dobbin promised, the bitch. Said my bad karma was totally bogus and that I had nothing to worry about. Well, I've got news for you. The day we arrive at a dryer-than-ever Rodellar it starts raining, and rains a lot. We are now fugitives from seepage, seeking dry rock at every turn. Also, it turns out that despite all the training, I am not fit. I am many things: handsome, strong, modest. Many things. Fit is not one of them. As a result Rodellar is kicking my ass, big style. So it seems that Karma is a bitch, after all.

So far we have had five days climbing, split between Margalef and Rodellar. Jules is on fire, ticking personal bests every day. We have a points-based scheme that works a bit like a handicap in golf - 10 points for equalling a personal best, then two points off for every grade down and so on. After two days Jules had doubled my score. Humph. I have mostly been failing to onsight 8a's at Rodellar but found the time to fail to retro-flash 7cs at Margalef. Great success. A bright spot amongst the dingy dismal failures was that I did manage an "onsight" of El Fustigador at Margalef (having seen Daila on it in dosage V). My head says flash, but in my heart, I know. Also, Jules has just bought me a coke, and tomorrow is our anniversary, so things are looking up...

humble pie

Phew. Think I might have been getting a bit big for my boots over the last two weeks, but thankfully the wheel has turned and karma has returned everything to its natural place.

This has happened in two ways. First, the send train I was riding has derailed. Leaves on the line perhaps. After ticking Unjustified I had another weekend at Malham: Jules wanted to do New Dawn, and I wanted to do Idefix, the easier of Gaz's two 8b's which breach the roof above the warm ups. Needless to say, Jules dispatched efortlessly, but I couldn't match the feat, getting totally shut down on a move off a shallow two finger pocket. I did what I always do in these situations; get angry. Big mistake. I now have no tick, and a re-appearance of the injury I received at Rubicon last autumn. Poo. So since then I've been taking it a little easier. I did go to Rubicon hoping to flash Dangerous Brothers. Oh the vanity - I couldn't even do the move. I'm so impressd that Superted flashed this route. Beast.

My second slice of humble pie came from the wilds of the interweb. The forums at UK Bouldering have a 'karma' system, where you can dole out good or bad Karma to those who deserve it. Until now, I've been inordinately pleased that my 'bad karma' rating was on zero. Today it stands at minus one. I believe this may have ocurred as a result of excessive bragging on this blog, amongst other places. I feel crushed.

So now I have attempted to escape my rush of bad karma by going to Spain. I gambled that bad luck wouldn't follow me here. Wouldn't you know it, we've just arrived at Rodellar, and it's started raining...

A Muerte

I'm growing to loathe that phrase. "A Muerte" - you can hear it on every climbing DVD, at every wall and from the mouths of slack-panted youths as they redpoint their first 7a. The phrase "A Muerte" is everywhere, but it seems the spirit of "A Muerte" is nowhere to be found.

Last weekend I took the wife/ticking machine to Malham, where she wanted to do New Dawn. As always there was a good scene up there, including the new "South Wests greatest sports climber™", Bob Hickish, who has moved up to these parts to study Physics at Sheffield (good choice). The thing that struck me most about Malham this weekend was the absence of anyone prepared to dig in to the bitter end. Rather than the power grunts of folk going "A Muerte", the sounds echoing round the catwalk were people mostly saying "take". Or occasionally "I am tired, take", said whilst hanging on the crux crimps. For god sake people, try harder. I reckon there were at least two redpoint attempts that could have ended in glory if the climbers in question had put in a proper balls-out effort to get to the top.

If I were King, the word "Take" would be banned. And alphabet letters would be free.

Unjustified

Shazam!

This week I've had the work shocker from hell - lots of deadlines corresponding with the return of the dreaded students meant that I didn't climb at all monday, tues, wed, thurs because I was in the office till late most nights. The deadlines elapsed on Thursday and the weatherman said cool and breezy, so I took Friday off work and drove to Malham. I'm glad I did though, because I managed to tick Unjustified, my third (and best) 8c!

Unjustified has a reputation as being very soft for the grade, and the grade math backs this up; it's probably 7b+/c to the big undercuts underneath the roof, and maybe 8a to the top from here. That shouldn't add up to 8c, but I think it does. The route just keeps coming at you, and there's nowhere to rest, or really even pause. Although it only took me five days, I'm choosing to believe that's because I've made some big gains this year. It certainly felt very comparable to Mecca Extension in difficulty.

Rob Sutton had driven down from Glasgow and was there too. Rob's an old friend, and I should have been more chatty but I was really psyched to get on Unjustified while the conditions were so good. I said sorry afterwards though, so that's OK. Occasionally I get so focussed on climbing that I get a bit anti-social at the crag. If I've ever ignored you because of that, consider this a belated apology, and I hope you didn't take it personally! Since becoming a father Rob's had little time to get on the rock, but I don't think it's slowed him down at all; I watched him cruise his way up Energy Vampires first redpoint. A really strong climber... It was good to catch up, and we all went for a celebratory beer and meal in the pub. I do love Malham.

Diet, diet, and the other one...

The title of this blog post comes from an old copy of the Thing, still the funniest look at the climbing scene in the mid-90's ever written by Jon Barton. Back in the hey-day of UK sport climbing, thin was in. Jerry somehow managed to dominate on a single slice of toast, whilst Malcom ate only steak and broccoli, and went to the extremes of padlocking his fridge. The joke in the title comes from the fact that three Sheffield climbers had set up a coaching service, which promised to look at "all the aspects of climbing".

2009 is looking more like the early-1990's every day. There's a grim economic mood, and lots of laid-off folk are hitting the crags instead of the job centre. Sport climbing is getting more and more popular, with even gnarly trad-heads getting in on the action. And, once again, dieting for climbing is cool.

Everyone's on a diet. Chris Doyle is blogging about his green tea-fuelled exploits. SuperTed is looking positively skeletal, and enfant-terrible turned grandad-terrible Stevie Haston has shocked the dieting world by going public with his 700 kcal-a-day super-diet.

I'm not sure how I feel about this. We all know climbers are some of the most body-conscious people on the planet, and I feel very uncomfortable with the idea of people publicising the fact that they are doing some pretty extreme dieting to aid their climbing. Within any cross-section of society there are people who struggle to eat healthily, and to have heavy dieting promoted by climbers they might look up to could be the spur that someone out there needs to enter a very destructive cycle.

The problem is that dieting for climbing works, and it's a nonsense to suggest otherwise. Try putting on a 5kg weight belt and repeating your hardest problem, and then tell me that you don't think losing a little extra weight might help your climbing. It's no coincidence that Doylo is in the best form for ages, that SuperTed has finally done Mecca, or that Stevie has dragged his geriatric frame up a 9a sport route that most of us couldn't even get to the first bolt on.

So that's why I'm not sure what I think about it all. Maybe the best thing to do is to make a pact that crash weight loss for climbing is not discussed, or is at least always discussed with heavy caveats about it being short-term and not good for your general health? Which is why I may or may not have lost weight recently, but I won't be telling you about it.

lazy on a sunny afternoon

Had high hopes for this weekend - blistering sun all week meant the crags would have dried out, the wife and I are in prime condition, and my project even has draws in-situ. Magic.

Saturday is too hot for Malham, so we hot-foot it to Trow Gill. Which is a long way from Sheffield. And a bit dirty, to say the least. However, the low-grade sevens are very nice, and I have a pleasant day demonstrating that I have completely lost any route-reading ability I once had. The missus flashes a 7b, which is a first for her, so we walk out feeling pleased. Until I realise I've lost my very expensive heart rate monitor watch at the crag.

Saturday evening we meet some old faces from Brizzle in the pub, and crash at Jenny and Bruno's house in Harrogate. Bruno is the single most dedicated individual I know. He raised the roof of his garage to fit in a home training wall, and has built himself the 'torture chair', where you can strap yourself into one of the 'electro-zap' machine thingies for a post pub workout/mock CIA interrogation. I am unable to resist. It hurts quite a lot.

On sunday we wake and it is cool, cloudy and dry. The wife and I have developed some nasty colds, but a head cold doesn't stop you being savage, it just makes you feel grim whilst doing it, so off to Malham we go. It turns out that Malham Cove is the only sunny place in the world. It is 1000 degrees, and we spend most of the day hiding in the shade, watching other people be impressively heat-resistant. At about 5pm, after several hours of snoozing Jules has a RP on her project and gets pretty much nowhere, and I fail to retro-flash the Maximum, but get it second go. We head home early.

Monday is cool and cloudy again - why can't the weather arrange itself around my redpointing shedule?