Well Well Well, Many news items for you today

1st - The TCA Comp

On Saturday we had the opening competition of the TCA Winter Series.

I did respectably well, I flashed 16 of the 20 problems and put in mediocre efforts on the remaining 4, but it was good enough to come joint 10th.

One of my targets for the year is to get a top ten finish in a TCA comp, unfortunately I find it hard to accept joint 10th as it seems far too much like 10.5th for it to count.

I am however feeling a lot lot stronger on the mothership angle, I need to do more pullups and lockoffs to really be where I want to be in terms of static moves, but I am moving fairly well compared to my previous thrutching attempts.

2nd - Cheddar!

On Sunday Tombi and I made the trip down to Cheddar for the day. I wanted to have a look at a couple of 7c's but after a poor start, where I was spanked by a 7a+ followed by a schooling on a 6b problem (which I sent out of sheer bloody mindedness - hardest 6b in the gorge?), I decided that today was not a day for pulling hard. So instead I fooled myself into believing I could make a decent effort on 'Insatiable' (7b+) on the Wave. As it was I made all the moves many times, but just kept running out of gas on the top moves. The bottom of the problem is a semi pumpy flat jug fest, then a long reach out to a vertical finger pocket and a battle against a combination of polish, barn dooring and stamina to the top. Unfortunately I lost the latter fight about 4 times before I called it a day.

Hanging just below the crux on Insatiable - Beautiful weather

Just after I stopped a couple of strong locals came and flashed it. One with my clips (then stripped it for me) and the other went up putting the clips in...Kinda inspiring and a little deflating in equal measure.

I am hoping to go back tomorrow to finish it off...but...

3rd - TCA today (trying some of the comp problems again)

So I got bored today and decided that instead of sitting around doing nothing I should go and do some sort of training. I headed off to TCA, stripped a trio of problems as a light warmup, then got on a couple of circuits, day flashing the two two 6b+ circuits. I then attempted the supposed 7a+/(7c) circuit and pumped out hard.

I thought my session was going to be over quickly after that but I tried some of the problems I had decided to project and, after many attempts, achieved both. The first was a crimpy, dynamic problem up the front of the mothership (really happy to have managed this problem - it was later sent first attempt by some strong locals - b@stards, I spoke to one later and it turns out he almost did a V13 up in Parisella's cave, so I don't feel too bad about it :-P)

I then managed to send the 18th comp problem which I was really happy about, it involves a tough dynamic span between the two highest volumes you can see in the picture below then a bit of grovelling afterwards. Unfortunately I fell off this move in the comp leading to the annoying position in the rankings

Great volumes, with any luck Will (who makes them for his company Climbing Wall Solutions) will have uploaded the video of my repeat attempt to facebook or the like sometime in the near future and I can link it to here)

The cool new volumes that I climbed on :-) That is Will in the photo though. And a different problem.