[TobyD]

M- 30 minute fast run.
T- wave session
W- some wave problems and 8x 14 move circuit
T - 35 minute run
F - 35 minute run
S - Malham, tried overnight
S - campussing and works circuit board; then it stopped raining and did about 25 or 30 miles on the bike in the afternoon...
M - supposed easy trad day; which seemed to involve english 6b moves and getting pumped a lot. Awesome.

[shark]

When bandage is off I'll start back at High Tor to get trad head back   

If that's preparation for July over here can I suggest no tradding that involves excessive fiddling in wires or use of double ropes. Lots of running up cracks on single ropes, ideally with just a rack of Camalots, would be good.

As with slots I can't until the backs of my fingers are healed properly. Face climbing for me in the meantime.

[Muenchener]

no tradding that involves excessive fiddling in wires or use of double ropes.

There are other kinds of tradding? 

[cheque]

Is there anywhere in the world where it's not raining?!

Good to hear you're on the mend Shark. 

I've thrown in Bank Holiday Monday as usual.

STG- Finish film (now have a deadline) without becoming irretrievably crap at climbing.

MTG- Do 24HHH in September without dying. New grades would be great too, but realistically I'd be happy with getting back to my personal bests (7a, 7A & E2) in any discipline after a long period of injury and underapplication.

LTG- Hard impressive badass routes.

M- Rest.

T- Rest.

W- Black Rocks filming. Did a little bit of climbing beforehand but curtailed it after I opened up the cut on my thumb and it bled everywhere. 

T- Rest.

F- Rest.

S- Black Rocks AM- did some soloing then attempted to film but rain stopped play. Then went to Raven Tor (when was the last time someone combined these two venues in a day?!) where I was shut down on every boulder problem I tried! I am so weak. Fun though, although I'm a lot more psyched for the routes than the bouldering. Hopefully get back here more during summer- happy to offer my services as belay slave in order to get back into it.

S- Rest. Sore!

M- Black Rocks. Filmed the final route for my film!

Yesterday I found out that I'd been selected to compete in "24 hours of Horseshoe Hell" (nothing to do with BMC voluntary work- it's an event where you climb sport routes for 24 hours straight in Arkansas). That should provide a suitable contrast to a year at Black Rocks! I'm nowhere near fit enough for this so I seriously need to start training for it!

I have just over 6 weeks to get my film edited, which will hopefully allow me to start training/  get out climbing as well, then 14 more weeks (the last of which will be spent in Arkansas itself) before the event.

It's generally steep sandstone with a lot of roofs, the rules of the comp state that you have to do at least one route per hour and there are thankfully lot of easy (sub 5.10) routes. Obviously half of them will have to be climbed by headtorch. Any advice UKB members can give me on how to train for this would be greatly appreciated as while the climbing is right up my street, there are lots of factors outside of my comfort zone!  -  I'm looking to get through it rather than than rack up a big points score.

[fatneck]

Nice one chaps and good to see Mr Popp psyched!

Mon - Bus. Avoided Pilates due to dodgy shoulder.
Tue - Walked to and from work. Nothing else. Shoulder still sore.
Wed - Bus to but walked from work. Light weights session in work gym, shoulder feeling better!
Thurs - Bus. Pilates with different teacher, he's a beats and I am fully buggered. Shoulder holds up ok but back to soreness levels of Monday. Kind of decided it's not serious..
Fri - Bus. Nothing else.
Sat - Travel to Conwy to pick Crouchy up fro his stage do, make him wear suitable scouse attire and hit the Cave. I manage to retro the Pillar traverse and did a few other eliminates but not being that psyched on the Cave any more, I decided to try and remain fresh for the srest of the weekend.
Sun - Porth Nefoedd by 11am - claggy start but came good. Did plenty of climbing but somewhat the worse for wear. Early night!!
Mon - glorious weather all day at Trwyn Talfarach. By the far the easiest approach of the three main Lleyn coastal venues but also by far the worst landing. Got spanked by Ministry for Silly Hats and failed to retro Cream Seam but did My Big Pogo which was my main aim for the day. The left arete of Wal yr Olygfa is oustanding and sports a nice grassy landing. Must do problem.... Also caught three small Pollack!

Lazy week in terms of walking to work and any training but great weekend at my favourite bouldering venues, quads are wrecked from balancing around on boulders and grassy descents from hell. Finished off with a take out at al fresco at Chez Richie's classy pad with stonking views. Blog with photos will follow!

[Dolly]

Strange week as I couldn't do any bouldering because of my back


M 8 easy routes toproped at the gym before Pilates
T Beastmaker and Frenchies on the lapis balls at The Foundry
W Toproped 10 easy routes at The Foundry
T Beastmaker
F 10/11 routes toproped at Foundry
S Easy bike ride
S slept

[nai]

M. Foot-on campus sesh at Mill. 1min on 2min off x 6.
T.
W.
T. Foot-on campus sesh at Mill. 1min on 1min.45secs off x 8.

Foot-on workout's going nicely, another 2 of those and I'll be at peak.

what size rungs do you use for this?

[petejh]

Short answer -
The small metolius, 22cm spacing.

Long answer -
It depends on where on the PE scale I want to target. (I had a brief dabble with the Ancap/anpow/aerocap/aeropow framework and went back to thinking in terms of PE, on a scale of short duration high-intensity to longer longer-duration lower intensity but still anerobic.)
If I wanted to train my anerobic endurance for a long pumpy route I'd probbly start off on the medium rungs for 3 - 5 mins and progress to the small rungs as fitness improved. But I'm targeting Melanchollie fitness - which is 11 hard moves/50 seconds, brief rest, followed by 9 hard moves/50 seconds (followed by finish of Bad Bad Boy).

[nai]

Cheers, long answer ties in with my thinking, I have medium-size Metolius rungs on my board but have been considering smaller holds, I reckon what I do on it is more at the endurance end of PE whereas for Peak Lime I generally need to be working at the power end.  The board only gets used for foot-on work so I was considering a set of system crimps, just not sure how small to go - 15mm or 20mm.

[petejh]

Says here the metolius small are 19mm:


At the Mill there's a set of super small rungs around 10mm or a bit less. They're good for 1 or 2-move power but not for foot-on becaues they trash your tips after around 10 consecutive moves!

[nai]

I was thinking of these, they'll never get used as campus rungs so should be fine.

http://crusherholds.co.uk/wooden-climbing-holds/crusher-system-hold-crimp1

[T_B]

Moon are bringing out some campus rungs. Not sure when, but the ones at the schoolroom, which are the prototypes, are very nice. Feel like they have a slightly more aggressive radius to the Metolius ones.

[shark]

I was thinking of these, they'll never get used as campus rungs so should be fine.

http://crusherholds.co.uk/wooden-climbing-holds/crusher-system-hold-crimp1

I have some of these and they feel good - pop in and try them out.

[petejh]

I reckon those 15mm crusher crimps will be spot on for intense foot-on.

For me the perfect training set-up for progression, both campussing and foot-on PE, would be 25mm, 19mm and 15mm rungs. The metolius smalls are starting to feel just a little bit too large for short duration PE, but the 10mm's are too small for foot-on.

[abarro81]

I hope Ben's not planning on using that new one as the model for the commercial one. Whatever he changed compared to the others on there has made the slots horrible! I do like having the slots as slightly more positive than the rungs though as it gives opportunity for minor adjustments in difficulty when doing foot on stuff, and its nice to have to be a little more accurate when using the slots.

[dave]

I find the slots a bit annoying, as I was hitting rungs openhanded, and finding my thumb was hitting into the slot, which is either A cheating or B risking tearing my thumbs off. Strikes me as an innovation that campus rung doesn't need, its perfect as it is. Although I know that is not music to the ears of someone trying to differentiate their version of a very simple product in a crowded marketplace.

[abarro81]

Yeah, can be annoying for thumbs when open. I'd have one set of of the smalls with slots, then a set of normals and a set of jugs if I were in charge. Don't like the larger moon ones  compared to big slopey jugs like at foundry or works.

[nai]

I was thinking of these, they'll never get used as campus rungs so should be fine.

http://crusherholds.co.uk/wooden-climbing-holds/crusher-system-hold-crimp1

I have some of these and they feel good - pop in and try them out.

Cheers but ordered some already.

[nik at work]

STG - Gotham extension, post on power club next week before Tuesday...
MTG - Trad projects, 8c (Make It Funky, Mini Sukarra), also an 8A or above
LTG - 9a
BHAG - Bruderliebe

M - Outside after an epic jugging up the rope fail where I expended pretty much 100% of my energy reserves I had a play on the headwall of the extension. Just had a quick dabble, it's all there and probably about 7a+ ish. Then lowered down. Doug then did his project which has been a pretty epic siege by his standards, well syked for him and he cruised it. Beast. I had a lead but fell off the last move boxed, still wasted from my poor rope ascending technique and also totally not dialled (and it's 8a...).
T - nothing
W - Go Karting in the rain, no training value (other than having to be tough and hardy in adverse weather conditions) but great fun.
T - bike ride with #1 son, ice cream included.
F - Batcave again, ab in and put qd's in the headwall. Then decide to have a burn from the ground. Surprise myself by doing Gotham straight off putting the clips in, then making it through the capping roof and onto the final headwall of the extension first climb of the evening, not a bad warm up. Frustratingly I think I could have done the route but the rope drag became epic so I couldn't climb on. Rope drag was so bad that lowering involved Doug having to pull the rope through the belay device and then watch the slack slowly disapear. Then Doug had a play on Gotham. Then I had another burn with a refined clipping strategy and... I got to the same point and rope drag was ridiculous again, grrrrrrr... The Doug had another burn on Gotham, he got it in 2 sections but without the bouldery start (he pulled past the first few moves). Think the extension is going to work out at 8a+/baby 8b.

S - Rain and DIY
S - Less rain more DIY

A slightly odd week. Not much climbing and no real training, but a pretty successful evening at the Batcave on Friday. In retrospect I should have realised the rope issue before it happened and sorted a solution. I'm going to have to use a two rope strategy and drop a rope at the top of Gotham. After Friday I was pretty happy thinking that it will go down quickly but after Saturdays rain the crag will ressemble a waterfall and I'm now frustrated that I didn't sort things out so that I could have done the route on the day. Hey ho, as is often the case it's not exactly the climbing that is the limiting factor, but some other surronding issue (rope work, weather etc).

[lagerstarfish]

11.2-4

Last went to Burns Unit at Northern General on Weds and they sent me packing with a bag of medical sundries as only my front two fingers need dressing now. Sonia has been skilful at changing the dressing each day but ignores my suggestion of dressing up in a nurse's uniform. Hand is healing well but the the backs of the mid two fingers is still gammy so maybe another week of dresssings. Kept stretches up and range of movement is pretty good. Next back at Burns Unit on Wednesday.

Done a bit of wine guzzling this week. Not missed the climbing too much and not done any training since the 20th but starting to think how to get back in the saddle. Might start with some easy fingerboarding this week to wake fingers. When bandage is off I'll start back at High Tor to get trad head back, maybe a bit of Stanage soloing to rekindle the fire and resume on Anger Management 8a+ at Tor. Will need to avoid things with slots like Weedkiller as backs of fingers will be tender for a while.       

[dave]

Yeah, can be annoying for thumbs when open. I'd have one set of of the smalls with slots, then a set of normals and a set of jugs if I were in charge. Don't like the larger moon ones  compared to big slopey jugs like at foundry or works.

To be honest I'd just be happy to have the old original schoolroom ones back up as they seemed spot on.

[iain]

Even slower off the mark this week than Nik.

STG: rehab shoulder
MTG: Hasse Brandler and Infinite Gravity in the Autumn

M: Shoulder rehab
T: Works circuits. On a harder circuit than previously but did a bit too much, shoulder felt tender after.
W: Shoulder rehab
T: Foundry routes. Thought fitness might be woeful but it hasn't completely disappeared after not doing any stamina for almost 2 months, stuff up to 6c clean. Probably overdid the shoulder again though.
F: Shoulder rehab
S: rest
S: Shoulder rehab
M: First time ever on mountain bike trails, brilliant fun. I'd might do more, but need to work on excitement to skill balance, I can see me hurting myself.

Felt like I pushed the shoulder a bit too hard both times climbing last week. Took it easy and no harm done but need to be careful.

Boulderwelt 7b+ circuit project ticked. yyfy I suppose

Understand the lack of outdoors frustration but that's a definite yyfy!