A picture says a thousand words

Craggy 8a!

Dem Photos

I dont agree with the grades!

The new boulder set is in, and I am apparently much stronger than ever before. 

I struggle to find this true since I havent really been training on boulders for a good while now.

For what it's worth, my personal grades:

1. *Green 6b+ (6B)
2. *Red 6c (7A)
3. Grey 7a, tough but good. (7A)
4. Blue 7a, could make a nice 6b+ if you stick a foot hold on the big move, it is literally the only hard bit (6C)
5. Red and White 6c/+, the egyptian is good beta. I actually like the last move. (7A)
6. *White 6c, Sweet problem! (6C)
7. Red, Didnt try, but looks brutal. 8B+? (7C+)
8. *Grey 6c/+ (7A)
9. *Blue 6B+ first two moves are rough. Rest is easy. (6C)

* flashed, Grades on Board

Anyways:

I now only have two boulders to do for the rest of the month, the green 7B and the red 8B+

And the red is obscene, like crazy obscene.

I cant do 6 of the moves on it, and the 4 that I can do are pretty tough to begin with...you have to do them to move into the crux...

Id quite like to head in tomorrow to get on the 8a again, but I'm not sure I will be able to find myself a belayer. The regular crew are heading over to Spain on monday so none of them will be climbing tomorrow. 

Selfish.

In other news, I made this image of Alissa's face stuck on a llama's body a while back, 

So for christmas she kindly made some Tshirts for us all to wear...

I was talking with Carly earlier this week, and I remembered an event in Thailand that I had completely forgotten about from my previous reports. In the absence of any interesting news, here it is:

__________________________________________________________ 

I was bored senseless from 3 weeks of sitting around, and the internet in the room wasn't working for the bazillionth time on the trip. In an effort to provide some 'excitement' to my life, I decided to go to the local 'Australian' themed sports bar and pillage their WiFi for a while.

Upon arriving, I ordered my Chang beer, and settled in to watch some Cricket. I can't remember who was playing. It might have been England vs India? Who knows. Anyways. I'm sat there with my Chang, minding my own business in the busy bar, when two people come up and ask to sit on the opposite side of the table. I dont really care - head in phone, trying to find some beta on the climbing area I wanted to have a look at the next day - I nod them to sit down and carry on looking at my phone.

After a minute of them talking about their food, I cant help but look up and recommend the incredible roast dinner deal they were about to miss out on, not to mention the huge jug of beer that came with it.

They thank me, introduce themselves and we start having a conversation.

It's amazing what being unbelievably bored can do for my sociability. 

Turns out they were a couple from Manchester, who were taking advantage of their summer holiday to travel round Thailand for a few weeks. Nothing particularly special. They ask me about my trip, and I explain that I have been sitting on the same island for about 3 weeks so far and could do with some interest.

The woman practically jumps up, her boyfriend looks at her with surprise, and then a look of dawning realisation crossed his face and he just looks away. 

"WE HAVE A CAT THAT POOS IN A TOILET"

right...  

"why does it do that?" I ask, somewhat bemused by the crazed woman I had chanced upon.

"IT HAS AIDS"

oh.

I am unsure how to respond to this comment.

Is this a sad thing?

I dont know. She appears to be well over it, indeed she was practically screaming it at me with wild excitement spread over her face. I think I probably should have been a little afraid. 

Instead I asked for proof. I mean, I'm not going to take this sort of claim at face value. 

Not remotely abashed, she whips out her phone, loads up the video that she was carrying around with her, and hands it to me.

Yup.

That was a cat shitting in a toilet.

Apparently this is a bit of a thing that people do?

Craggy 8a again!

Hot shit!

Holidays started on Wednesday this week and I am psyched!

Not really sure what I am going to be doing with my time yet, few offers of time are coming in - Font, North Wales, Peak, elsewhere!

Not much going down since last week, except to say - I am certain that the 8a at Craggy will go.
Holy shit.
Really, Awesome.

Just something I drew,
The Squid of Dreams.

Made all the links on it today, climbed it in two links pretty easily, found some better beta for the top and made all the clips! Oh my gosh. So psyched!

Might even go in tomorrow just to have another go on it.

Pete wants to go to have a look at Parthian on Sunday, not sure now.
I love projects!

Hot Shit! Two posts in a month!

Am I going soft?

No.

Just back on it, accidentally opened the page and figured I might as well write about it.

I'm going to intersperse this post with some photos from the weekend in the Peak.

For the first time ever tonight, I got on a Craggy 8a, and not only that - I did all the moves!
Not all in one go, but still!
Hoooooooly crap.

I typed that and realised what that really means to me.

It might even be only a year ago now, but I remember coming into Craggy and seeing Scott, Seb and Graeme all working on the Lead wall, training in weight vests, and generally trying all the really hard stuff (anything 7a and above). I was still pretty much only bouldering at the time (what with being a giant wimp about failing on the ropes) but watching them try all that hard shit was super inspirational at the time.

I remember Scott trying an 8a on the wall, and telling me to give it a go, and at the time I thought he was taking the piss.

Maybe he was.

Looking up at it, the whole thing seemed ridiculous. I couldnt even do the moves, let alone doing more than one at a time with clips in between! Well whatever, today I climbed on one, and not only that - I did all the moves at the end of the session.

Was I wrong before about how hard they were? I mean, the one today felt easy...
Has the training just skyrocketed my grade from 7a to around 8a?
Who knows...

Anyways, I am well psyched to get back on it!

Big Thanks to Carly for the belay shizzle - looks like Brean on Wednesday!
First 8a on the table?

So many things to tell you...

But how to make you see?
The actions of my past?
Impossible.
You'd turn away from me.

I've been holding holds and climbing
But what? I'll tell you soon.
continue reading onwards follower.
Are you singing this in tuneeeeee?


See, that's why you tune in. It might have taken 2 months, but when I get my arse into gear - you get gold like that.

So basically, I cant really remember what I have been up to. I mean, it has almost been 70 days since I last wrote on here and a bunch of stuff happened.

In vague order of chronological order:

1. Injury
2. Font
3. Brean
4. Training
5. Blokfest

1. Injury

So basically, I have spent the last few months being a little bit injured in a lot of places.
The first place is the long standing shoulder injury that is now mostly better.
The second is my right foot big toe, I hurt this waaaay back at the end of summer and it hasn't really sorted itself out. It's not a big issue when I am climbing, but it kinda hurts when I take my shoe off.
The third is my back. I spoke to Rupert at TCA about it, and he thought it might just be some strain. Not sure how I managed that, but it has been trundling onwards for a fair while now. Again, doesn't stop me climbing, but I wish it would just sod off.

2. Font

Despite these injuries, I decided to head out to font in the October half term with a group of peeps from TCA. I had hoped that given the late time of year, we might be blessed with cold temps, superb friction and perfect crushing conditions. Unfortunately this was not the case. Instead, we had warm weather and damp conditions.
C'est la vie!
No matter, I had a great time stomping round the forest climbing 6a's and b's. Toward the end of the trip we had a beautiful day in Franchard. After a damp start in the morning, the sun decided to show its face and we were blessed with some incredible light in the afternoon. I so inspired, I even decided to have another go on Angle Ben's, El Poussah and El Pousif! <--- at="" did="" exclamation="" i="" least="" make="" mark="" might="" nbsp="" of="" one="" p="" that="" them...="" think="" understand="" you="">No.
I did none of them.
But I reached a new high point on them all! Hoorah!
Psyched to return and give them another shot in even better conditions now. Who knows when that will be though...

3. Brean

Brean, oh Brean!
Sea of aquamarine
was ever a place
as lovely as Brean?

Yeah, probably.
The last time we went, the telephone wire in the campsite had fallen down and was lying in the middle of the road prompting a call to the local police and skirting round it warily. The queue of traffic behind us was held up by a van that could quite decide whether it would be able to squeeze through. When we finally arrived at the crag, it was completely empty. Great!
Unfortunately about 30 minutes after we arrived it was then became massively overcrowded around storm warning causing a terrible bottleneck for Pete, who looked good to crush Brean Topping.
Fortunately I didnt really have any aims, and decided to give Tide Rising another shot. Graham stuck the clips in, and tried to work out some beta before retiring to the ground to try and warm up again.
I had done the route a few weeks before with Pete, so I went up again to warm up, and tried to remember the beta so that I could share it with Graham. Eventually, I worked out the incredible beta I had chanced upon for the top moves and, after giving it all a good brush, I descended to the ground.

I could bore you with the specifics of the ascent, but suffice it to say I did it second attempt and moved onto Bullworker, the last remaining 'honest' (non linkup) 7c I have left on the crag. Again, I could bore you with details, but I am well up for returning to fire this one off at some point. It didnt feel too hard after I worked out the moves, it will once again be a matter of stamina, but I think I can win this one if I climb efficiently enough.

4. Training

Carly from TCA has recently moved back to the South East(ish) and is psyched for training, so we are climbing together on Monday/Wednesday with Joe and Robin to try and build back up some stamina for route climbing. Everything seems to be going quite well. I'm not sure what I think of 4x4 routing. The problem I'm having, is that easy indoor routes have a tendency to cause flappers, and I am really not psyched for them. Flappers suck. So I think I may start running some harder laps with downclimbing inbetween. It all just seems a lot more relevant. And it works for Pete, so by god I will make it work for me.

I climbed on wednesday this week, and despite feeling like I wanted to murder everyone and everything in the centre when I arrived, I actually ended up having a really good session on the white 7c on the comp wall. Indeed, after I had my first burn, I thought it might be possible to do it in two halves by the end of the session. Imagine my surprise then, when I did it next attempt! Apparently, only 4 people have done this route now.

1. Mark Croxall (setter and wad)
2. Pete (Polish crusher)
3. Graham (who climbed the 8a!)
4. and myself!

I wont lie, it wasn't easy, I went full on Sharma scream for the last move, and skipped the clip before it just to be able to keep moving. Nevertheless, I have done my first Craggy 7c! I claim that as one of my best ascents of all time, and probably one of the hardest. Very pleased.

5. Blokfest

I'm going tomorrow in about 8 hours, so wish me luck!

I'll come back and write some stuff and add some photos in a bit.

Toodles!

U25 Fives Nationals

This weekend I competed in the U25 Fives nationals, held in Eton.

My last two forays into national events in the past couple of years have been fairly successful; winning the U25 A-Plate in 2011, and reaching the semi-finals of the main competition in 2012. Sadly, I was not able to build on these results in 2013.

I did take a couple of nice pictures though,
I favoured black and white for a lot of this series...it just seemed right (the rest of the set can be found here:

A.Joyce & J.O'Neill

The day started earlyish so I could pick up my partner and make our way to Eton for the 10am start. This year I was going to play with one of the kids from the school; a nice guy called Harvey Jackson, who is also my captain of fives for the year. 

Harvey has never played in an 'adult' competition before, and certainly never against the quality of opposition that we came up against over the course of the day. As such, our first game was probably a bit of a rude awakening. Despite some solid play against the first seeds (Joyce & O'Neill) we were duly dismantled 0-15 in a clinical display of fives acumen. A few inches makes the difference in fives, and if every one of your shots is that far off the mark, it is easily punished by a class opponent.

Chasing back to retrieve a great passing shot.

We won our next game, against two brothers from Cambridge, without too much hassle and moved on to the last one in our group stage. Annoyingly, this one was a match we should have won, and could have moved us into second place in the group to go forth into the main competition. However, a number of misplaced cuts and volleys at 8-6 up saw us slump to a disappointing 8-15 loss within only a few exchanges of serve.

Laurie killed a man

Nevertheless, we finished the group in 3rd place and dropped into the Plate A competition...
I knew we were in with a chance, since we were playing all right. Maybe not a winning standard, but hopefully a position in the finals at least.

Sadly it was not to be. Our form from the previous game followed us and, despite once again being up at the start, we failed to convert against some youngsters from Westway in another game we coulda, shoulda, woulda won.
As an aside - I had to laugh when I shook hands with their team at the start of the game, and found that we had a Noah, Harvey and Archibald on court...What other sport in the world could do that?!

Having gone 1-3 so far on the day, we dropped once again and took part in the 'Plate-B' final... or as I prefer to call it, the Losers Losers plate.

Our final game was to be a best of 3 matches, against a couple of kids from Ipswich school. Apparently they were the U15 national champs 2 years ago, and could have posed some difficulty given our roll of losses already.
I say 'could have' because they clearly couldn't be arsed to take part in the game. As games go, this one will stick in the memory as the first time I have had to turn around halfway through and ask my opposition if they actually wanted to play. Fives is a game of sportsmanship, and I have to say, I find it incredibly disrespectful to mope and generally dick around on court when you are in the final (even if it is for a consolation plate).





We ended up destroying them in two games, 12-3, 12-8 but it really wasn't much fun. Ever remember playing a board game with someone that doesn't want to play? Yeah.

I know it is probably poor show to rag on two kids too much; but I'm going to anyway, because that was possibly the least enjoyable game of competitive fives that I have ever played. I can only hope they sort out that attitude for future games.

Balls to the wall, or not at all!

Laurie went on to the final after winning in his Semi but we had left by this point so I have no pictures of the remaining games.

I understand that, after winning the first game 12-8, he went on to lose the next two 12-4, 12-5.

Overall, I would say that the result we gained was probably a good reflection on the amount of practice we have had as a pair.
Factors that I think contributed to our abject failure were:

1. We hadn't played together before the tournament.
2. Neither of us has played a competitive fixture in roughly 8 months.
3. Harvey has never played anyone of this standard.
4. My shoulder is still healing, and my foot is still strained.
5. Harvey played a full game of rugby the day before the tournament.
6. The Eton courts are pretty dissimilar to the Cranleigh ones.

Ah well, I'm sure that if we play again later in the season then we will fare better, but I don't think I can feel too hard done by for what happened yesterday.

In terms of positives to take from the day - My left shoulder (the injured one) doesn't hurt any more than usual today, and I'm pretty psyched for a session at craggy tomorrow.

Woop Woop!