I can only apologise for the major delay between blog posts, I have been pretty slack on the writing front, and pretty busy on the climbing/training/working one. Believe it or not, I have sat down on numerous occasions and wrote a few thousand words, but at the last minute decided not to publish them for one reason or another.

I have mainly been training endurance for my future projects but I have managed to make it further than Manchester Climbing Centre on a few occasions. One of these found me way up north in bonny Scotland, at Dumbarton Rock with my sights set on the second ascent of Rhapsody. I won’t bore you with the details, but it’s safe to say that Rhapsody turned out not quite how I was expecting it to be, and so wasting no time I headed home to prepare for something new.

As usual the weather in England got the better of my plans and I got back on with my endurance work. Time passed and I felt myself making slow but steady progress. I don’t enjoy training in general, and endurance training is the worst. At least when you are working power, it is quick and relatively pain free. You try a problem, and you either do it, or fall off on a particular move, then you rest until you feel ready, and try again. With endurance, it’s all about suffering. You climb and climb and climb, your arms getting fatter and heavier and with every move making you feel sicker with the increasing pump, but you keep on climbing and climbing, feeling sicker and sicker, until you can climb no more. Then you rest, your heart pounding and forearms throbbing. Before you have had chance to recover fully, you force yourself to pull on again. The cycle repeats itself, only this time you feel sick right from the start...

On three separate occasions my plans to spend time on my new project failed to come to anything, thanks to Mr Rain. Living in England you grow to accept this is just the way it goes, and like endurance work, it is a necessary evil that will always be there. There is no point in moaning, you just have to get your head down and find a way to deal with it and in the end, these discomforts and inconveniences make the eventual success even sweeter.I head back to work in a few days time so it looks like my project is going to have to wait for another few weeks.

It is sometimes hard knowing this unclimbed beautiful wall is just waiting. I feel ready, I have all the necessary gear, I have everything I need except time. Things keep getting in the way but for now, there is nothing I can do about it so I am going to take my earlier advice, and quit moaning.

Speak to you all soon