In short, I have been super busy with numerous different projects and since multitasking is definitely not one of my strong points, I have found it difficult to fit them all around one another. Writing a blog dropped right to the bottom of my pile of priorities, it became a do it tomorrow task and as the famous saying goes, tomorrow never comes.
Apart from my usual activities of climbing, training, lectures and personal work, I have recently been organising a lot of the logistics for an upcoming North Face trip I am running. The Summit Series road Trip runs from the 1st of April until the 10th of May and will take us through 14 countries to the finish at Melloblocco in Italy. Along the way we plan to climb a selection of the best, classic Fr8a’s in Europe as well as holding lots of slideshows, masterclasses and other events during our rest days.
The schedule is manic, and pretty much works out at one climbing day, one event day, one climbing day, one event day, all the way to Mello. I would never have imagined the amount of work that is needed to organise something like this. In the past my trips have always been fairly spontaneous, you know the date you leave, and after that, everything just sort of happens, but for this, simply because of the very tight schedule we need to keep if we are to complete it as planned; we need to have every day planned to perfection. Hundreds of emails have gone back and forth between many different people, and whole days just seem to vanish into a blur of forwarding, Cc’s and attachments!
When I have been able to justify time away from the computer, it’s been a tough decision between time on the rock, and time training. Obviously the rock is where I would like to be every day, but especially in the UK, days out at the crag can seem like frustrating wastes of time and money if the weather is bad. I love being outside, and in a perfect world, I would climb outside every day, but since climbing is more than just a pastime, I need to be both realistic and professional and make decisions that I feel are best for my personal progression.
Training certainly helps me progress and since it is not weather dependent it often seems like the right choice. However It is surprisingly easy so get sucked into a circular cycle of training for training sake, and at times I have had to check with myself that there is a specific aim to work towards. Without an aim or a goal, is there really a point? Possibly I guess, maybe the aim is simply to get really strong and ripped? But if that was my goal, I’d probably just take up body building. At least then I’d get to cover myself in baby oil and wear a shiny thong....
Last time I wrote about French Duke at Earl Crag. It took me a while to return to for round two on the route, much longer than I had originally planned and unfortunately the weeks between seemed to have caused a significant drop in the skin-rock friction coefficient. Despite feeling much stronger than my previous session, I failed to reach my high point and after 3 or 4 attempts I decided to cut my losses and try something else.
Paul from Hotaches was out with me getting some footage for their next DVD and so rather than just calling it a day we drove to Ilkley to try to film a little circuit. It was a fun afternoon with a lot of climbing and by the time we had finished, I felt tired and a little beat up but very content. We filmed a few problems including Desperate Dan with the direct start, Baby Spice, Ring Piece and finally Cindy Crawford. I was trying to highball CC but was stopped by a powerful lock out to the arête a few moves from the top. You are pretty high at this point, and committing to hard moves when you know you are not firing on all cylinders is difficult to do.
The difference between success and failure on the grit is very slim and 9 times out of 10 comes down solely to conditions. After climbing lots on Gritstone over the last 6 years, It seems to me that to find success, you need a healthy dose of either luck or patience. Planning in advance is almost impossible, you just need to be in the right place, at the right time, and the magic will happen.
Embracing, rather than fighting the warming weather, I began to make a few trips to Wales to climb in Parisella’s cave. This seemed like a good trade off all-round as it was still real rock, yet the problems are all powerful and often endurance orientated so would also work as training.
After re-acquainting myself with the place, I recently had a pretty good session climbing a nice set of problems both old and new (to me). The highlight of the day was split between climbing The Wire, and Bell Pig, two very different problems but both pleasantly satisfying. One of the best things about the cave is the almost never ending opportunities for links, when you complete a problem, there is almost always something you can climb into or out from it. I would like to spend a little more time in there when I get back from the trip, and if my endurance is as good as I hope it will be when the roadtrip is over, maybe I can do something really long and hard.
I have climbed quite a lot over the last week and my body is feeling tired for it so I think it will be wise to take a rest up until the roadtrip begins. (un)fortunately, I still have many jobs to do for the organisation so its safe to say I wont be sat around twiddling my thumbs!
