Payback

Last night, seemingly out of the blue, I felt stronger in training than I ever have. The reason, in hindsight is obvious. I’d just been doing one/two sessions 5 days a week for about three weeks, and my body was shredded. An enforced couple of days off due to appointments around Scotland last weekend barely even seemed enough to feel normal again. It sounds like nothing, but three weeks is a long time to feel no improvement, or negative progress, when you are giving it full pelt every single night until your upper body can’t face another move in the wee small hours.

We are totally hardwired not to think of the long term in this respect. It takes a bit of faith that it’s working. If I’d got too frustrated (which I nearly did) and taken some rest to ‘cash in’ too early, I would have sabotaged the kickstart for the body.

Last night, two boulder problems went down that I’d been trying for four months. They felt easy. Like nothing. Last week I spent a whole hour (a long time on a board V-hard with 60 second rests between tries) just trying to do each move.

I nearly saw of the hardest project I’ve set so far, got to the last move of seven and swung my legs about wildly in confusion, eyes practically drilling a hole in the board searching for the crucial foot hold. Except I’d taken it off the board and forgotten. Idiot. The next ten attempts to move No. 5 were fair punishment.

Progression is here

Just a note to say the Progression DVD stock arrived with us this morning and is in the webshop now. Sharma’s first ascent of Jumbo Love 9b in the states, Adam Ondra making 9a+s look like nothing, the young americans destroying the hard grit classics, Patxi Usobiaga showing you what training really means. Tommy Caldwell trying to take big wall climbing to a new level of difficulty (again) and all the rest of the jaw dropping bouldering we expect from a Big Up film. You can get it here

I’ll be finishing writing early today for my appointment with the DVD player before training this evening. The board better be ready. I’m expecting this film to get me very psyched!

Learning to write big things

Right now I am writing a book. So far it’s been a fascinating learning curve for a novice book writer. I have written one book, which I give away for free (here), but I cheated and wrote that on the bus from Fort William to Arrochar and didn’t put any pressure on myself to see it as a book until it was finished. I’ve also written about a third of an ebook about weight optimisation (sounds better than control) for climbers on my phone. I might try and finish it on my phone just for the novelty!

But this time round I’m putting a bit of pressure on myself, not just to finish it, but finish it quickly. I’m about a week away if I was locked away in a room without distractions. But unfortunately my computer serves me up distractions constantly. At least the Scottish autumn doesn’t serve too many good weather distractions. And one hour on my board equals four on the crag.

In school I felt sick at the thought of 2000 word essays. Project climbing taught me how to ride the wave of those random days when inspiration and energy coincide and make a jump of progress. It also taught me that even the bad days when everything felt ten times harder than it should resulted in valuable progress, but you only realise it in hindsight. So I’m lucky that my background has given me a lot of advantages for getting it done. 

Both my blogs got me past that awful feeling of sitting down to write and staring at a blank page for two hours. The medium tends to teach you how to just say what you need to say. My emerging book is turning out like that, which I like. It’s also arranged a bit like my blog - point by point and easier to digest than a massive chapter. Easier to write too, so it should be with you soon. 

Thanks to everyone who’s asked about it - I’ll talk about it plenty as soon as I’m done writing. For now I can tell you it’s called ‘9 out of 10 climbers make the same mistakes’. It’s a book about improving at climbing, but it does what all the others don’t. The books out there at the moment lay out all the possible ways and exercises to improve in front of you. They are the map. But nearly everyone gets lost and strays off the path. So my book is the compass - it shows you how to navigate through the sea of possible improvement activities and how to decide which ones you need to focus on, and which are the big priorities to keep in front of the smaller ones.

Talking of training for climbing books - The best thats out there right now is still The Self Coached Climber. I reviewed it ages ago on my other blog. But I realised it was crazy I wasn’t selling it myself, especially because you’d get my free book How to climb hard trad with it which is obviously compliments it quite nicely. So I am now, here.

Nevis soloing in winter with Cunningham

Nice video of John Cunningham soloing on the Ben in the mid 1970's. Thanks to Paul Cunningham for sharing that. I'd seen this before at the Ice Men gathering I hosted a few years ago at the Fort William Mountain festival with Yvon Chouinard (who shot the film), Jimmy Marshall and Hamish McInnes. It was nice to see it again and watching it made me think how little has changed today in highland climbing. Maybe not on the Ben which is a tad busier on weekends, but highland climbing is still a relaxed, exploratory, wild and sometimes lonely affair, 40 odd years later. Here's to that. I'm more likely to end the day with tea than a dram though, and then get training!

Back to back sessions

Excalibur

Kev gets too strong for the board and starts pulling T-nuts right through the board

Long day of writing and training today, feeling weak but enjoying Donald's excellent problem setting on the dry tooling board at Al's place, after bouldering on my own board. It's been a few years since I spent a decent amount of time climbing with tools in my hands and after the last session or two I'm really locked into the idea of turning some sustained tool training into a very hard route on Ben Nevis this season. Still probably too hard to succeed, but the last couple of days are certainly on the right path.

I learned a completely new move from Kev for swinging feet across a roof without losing body tension. Fantastic, but after trying the problem about 20 times repeatedly flipping upside down gave me such a stomach ache I ended up having to stop three times on the way home to moan and groan to myself in pain. Sign of a good training session I suppose.

Christina moves dynamically for the next hook

Down to business

Tool training on my board last night. Seconds later I wiped out flat on my back and spent the rest of the session rolling around trying to get some wind back in my lungs. Need more mattage!

I’m gradually getting used to my home board with nightly sessions after work. It’s the best thing since sliced bread. My cadre of project problems is getting big and vaired enough now to get the strength gains coming although I must admit I find endurance circuits harder than training on real routes (but still the way to go - just need decent music and a nice circuit).

I’m trying to mix in my training for the winter season and making a little progress with fitness and technique with tools, although I feel that I’ve only just got started here. Doing both is feeling hard on the body, which is demanding an extra hour of sleep per night. So that’s one less hour working on my book, but such is life. 

The weather man is saying November is going to be warm so it looks like I’ve got time to generate some decent gains in time for the arrival of white frosty stuff plastering Scottish mountains. Brilliant to have my winter project as a clear focus for the season, and a good scene of Lochaber strong-men to share training with. Some are suffering for their art a little too much at times - check out big Al’s skull damage here.

Wasted arms, big smile. Time for a cup of tea.

Back to the wall

I used up the last of my mini-peak on my Sky Pilot project and all the rest was making me lose fitness, with no sign of success imminent just yet. So it was a great relief to get back to training every day. When I say great relief, I just mean I hate hate hate losing fitness, and love gaining it, simple as that. I still haven't even scratched the surface of using my board to it’s full extent, and quite perversely looking forward to the dark winter months of full scale daily training on it. 

Starting to train with axes again for winter gave my elbow a bit of a fright, which was worrying. But this was followed by a bit of a kickstart and it seems stronger than ever.

Tomorrow: 4 hours training, 12 hours book writing, many cups of tea, few meals, large bags under eyes.

Thusrday: I’m speaking in Dundee, see you there.

Monkey See Monkey Do DVD out now in the shop

This year’s DVD release from Hot Aches is just out and available from my shop right here. The Singlehanded section just went down a storm at the Edinburgh Mountain Film Festival on Sunday, scooping a couple of prizes.

The DVD has four films on it:

‘Singlehanded’ with Kev Shields soloing E6 and M10+ drytooling with the prosthetic ice axe that replaces his missing left hand. If you’ve ever done E6 or even worse M10+ you’ll be like me and watch with uncomfortable trepidation as Kev demonstrates it (just) with one hand less than most of us.

There’s also welsh slate weirdness with master Johnny Dawes, Matt Segal and Hazel Findlay, Big Wall 8b+ in Madagascar with James McHaffie and E8 in Squamish (yes - Squamish!) with Sonnie Trotter. The full lowdown on the lineup is here. The Madagascar big walling looks quite sublime - would love to go there someday. Kev’s film is my favourite though I guess because it deals head on with the dangerous addiction of soloing harder and harder rock climbs - a life enriching, but potentially life destroying pastime. Always a great paradox for bold climbers to grapple with. I’m always interested to hear the thoughts of those who are prepared to share them on this subject.

Other news from our shop is that we’ve put Cubby’s logbook (always a Christmas favourite) on sale from it’s RRP of £15 down to £5. 

Enjoy.

Autumn ups and downs

Glen Nevis today in full golden glory

I’ve had better weeks. Started off Sunday all set to go on a quick raid to Hoy only to come down with a miserable cold and have to cancel at the last moment. What a bummer. That kind of took the wind out of my sails I must admit. I spent the week working on my book and feeling sorry for myself. Today I felt good for climbing again and snatched a lovely afternoon at Sky Pilot. Still feeling reasonable on the project even after 4 fitness draining days off, but need to turn around a backward performance trajectory double quick. 

Good progress on the book though which has got me pretty keen to really get my sleeves up with this project.

Maybe see you at the Edinburgh Mountain Film Festival on Sunday night at my lecture?

The Old Man of Storr

Standing on the summit of the Old Man of Storr, Skye. Photo by Cubby Images. Click it for a bigger image

A few weeks ago myself and Blair climbed the Old Man of Storr on Skye. I was waiting to get a picture of it from Cubby who came along for some shots to post it up. I found not a single trustworthy runner on the entire thing and more or less every hold was quite freely detachable. So I wouldn't recommend it for the faint hearted. We climbed it by Mick Fowler’s route on the north side, which seems to be the easiest method.

I stood on the top for about ten minutes so that Cubby could take a picture with each of his numerous cameras and lenses. It was pretty damn hard to stand up in a gusty gale and seriously added to the feeling of exposure perched on top of this Skye rocket.

One of those things you just have to climb, for some at least…

Blair enjoying the rotten, collapsing weetabix basalt. At least there were not many runners to take out.