[cheque]

Absolute rollercoaster

No shit. Glad to hear things are looking up. If you could go on that big wall trip with your son in 2022 and liveblog it via Instagram that would be great. 

[Yossarian]

Absolute rollercoaster

No shit. Glad to hear things are looking up. If you could go on that big wall trip with your son in 2022 and liveblog it via Instagram that would be great. 

We have agreed to try Freerider for his 21st (with his sister, who'll be 25), but that's not until 2035 so you'll have to be patient...

[AJM]

Enough green, and the right kind of orange, to make it feel like a reasonable year. Pleased with the bouldering, a little frustrated I didn’t manage to line things up better for DWS, and a bit of a disappointment not to get a bit more route climbing done.

Arbitrary training goals:
- 1.5-x-5 solidly on the campus board, then 1-x-5

During the winter training block I was doing pretty well here, 1.5-3-5 and 1.5-4-5 going ok and hit 1-4-5 a couple of times too. Haven’t done it for a while though so probably need a bit of work to get back there

- L sit to Tuck Planche on the paralettes as a marker point for having worked on a weakness

I think this one got there, although possibly the slightly scrappy end. Need to video it again some point. Again, lack of practice over the summer means I’m probably a way back from that now, so points dedicated for lack of consistency

- pull-ups 5x5 @95kg, and actually do some stuff on offsets

92kg I think

- some progress on a front lever

Didn’t really try

Climbing goals:

- make use of continued working from home and hopefully greater tolerance of more remote working in future to do some longer hybrid climb/work trips (not ridiculously long, but extending beyond the usual 2 week mark)

When I wrote this I had in mind a month or so in June, maybe Frankenjura - instead 3 weeks in the dales/Lakes which was still pretty good

- make the June-June 12 months my best period of bouldering yet

Lockdown running all the way to end March threw roadblocks in the way of this. In terms of 8a.nu points (I know, I know - but I find they correlate reasonably well to good/bad years) I nearly got there. I think I equalled, perhaps, but then as I spent much of the summer chasing difficulty rather than volume I didn’t replace last years ticks as they fell away.

By another metric, it’s actually been pretty solid, in that since the end of the first lockdown I’ve done 4 7A+s in different areas (more than doubling the lifetime total), three of which are fairly well established and not esoteric (Picnic Sarcastic, Monty Pythons Direct sitter, Drifter sitter, Liquid Sun), come fairly close on another (Hyperspace at Virtual Crag) and had solid goes on a 7B (Picnic Sarcastic sitter). Also had a few promising sessions on another local 7B, and doing Liquid Sun opens the door to working the extension, adding in a sitter I’ve already done, to get a looong 7B+ tick.

- climb route 7c/+ again

With the demise of the hypothetical routes trip in June, this one just never happened

- work on my “why haven’t I already” and “harder local things to try” tick lists

Nice non specific goal, so an easy one.
0%-10%-13% on Why and 13%-17%-20% on Harder

- nail at least one of my Portland dws projects, try mark of the beast, and do some more stuff at Swanage and in south Devon.

Meh. Didn’t do anything in Swanage or south Devon, didn’t tick any of the Portland projects, although I did infill a few missing cv gaps, and my try at MotB was pretty token and a bit disappointing.

[36chambers]

...

5 off the never ending “why have you not done these yet?” list [3: Fluid dynamics stand, Like a hurricane, Jerry's Roof, poor effort for finishing off stuff this year]
5 sessions trying 8B/s [tick: pretty sure I've played around on High Fiddy on five occasions, spending lockdown on the chevin it was bound to happen, no RPs yet mind. nothing to add since Q1]
5 new UK crags [4: Giggleswick North, Trow Gill, Pacman Boulders, Gallt yr Ogof Boulder, poor effort for getting to new places]
5 days roped climbing [20+ Did my first sport route in 5 years and I think I spent an unprecedented solid 4 months tied in]
5 eights [3.5: Dead Baron, Fluid Dynamics (7C+/...), Subculture, Raindogs (desperate times including sport routes) ]
5 climbing trips (who knows how this will pan out) [3: 5 days in Wales, 1 iffy week in Font, 1 wet trip to the Roaches]
5 FA’s [4: Proud Mary, Flake Arete, A Fistful of Heather, and The Eggman, details to follow eventually]
5 training room PB’s [never got round to establishing any benchmarks to compare to]
5 highballs [3 probably not highballs but whatever: Andy's Route, Ron's Reach, Gypus, been too wet recently to get on the ones I'm keen for]
5 board projects [2: I've done 45 of the 50 recorded problems, but only two took me more than a few sessions, poor effort again.]
5 of the Brimham Dirty Dozen [Had a brilliant day out with Triple T to the Tone. Did 6.]

I blame sport climbing for the lack of green. But a good year regardless.

[reeve]

Well done to those who have plenty of green in their lists; for those with more amber and red... I'm afraid I might be about to join the club! Particularly well done to those of you who've faced big life changes, irrespective of the colour of your goals.

Climbing
Fix golfer’s elbow (going well) and wrist (recent injury) – obviously most of the following goals are dependent on how well these go
Yes to both (phew!)

Trad – done almost nothing of note in the last 5 years, so let’s go big and try for 50 E4-E5s and 12 E6s
Ha! This was overly ambitious. Having looked back through the old logbook, this would have meant my best year of trad ever, on the back of 5 years of very little trad... Pretty pleased with doing 20 E4-5s (and a questionable one E6) and feel like I have achieved my member status of the ledge shuffling club

Sport – done almost nothing of note in the last 4 years, so let’s assume that I’ll buck that trend and go for 5 8a’s and 3 8a+’s
Ha! Again, overly ambitious, given I last climbed a grade 8 in 2018... what was I thinking when I wrote these goals? I did do a solitary 8a though so for the puerile ticker (which I am) that was quite a relief

Visit 12 new-to-me crags (including at least one new area)
Smashed it... and one of the best characteristics of this year, for me, was going to loads of new places. I lost count but probably about 20 new-to-me crags

Go DWS
I'm generously counting the Doncaster Crackhouse canal as a token effort for this. I did fall in and get wet.

Enact fierce retribution unto at least one route on the grudge-match list (i.e. past failures)
Only one that I can think of (Snug as a Thug on a Jug at Stanage), but one's enough

Life
Buy a house
Yep - and we really like it (except for the amount of noise which comes from our neighbours - see DIY goals for 2022)

Continue with good habits established in recent years (diet, ethical sourcing of food, giving blood, focussing on what’s good as well as what I would like to change)
Going to give myself another green here - although I do need to remember to book another blood appointment...

Treat Marie more often
Fortunately Marie is upstairs right now so I can't ask her, so I'll unilaterally give myself an amber - her opinion might differ 

Continue enjoying work, get paid more &/or drop a day each week, help shape the whole team to work more effectively, get lots out of training course I’m on
Did well here, with going up a band at work and dropping down to four days a week! Well chuffed with this although it could have happened before the middle of August. The PGDip course I'm on is great but keeps being extended and is far more onerous than it was sold to be (we were told it would be 3 assignments, we've done 12 so far with another four to go!)


More green than I expected there to be fair... and goals aside it's been a great year for both climbing and life.

[monkoffunk]

My main aim for this year was passing exams, which was really a prerequisite for most of the other aims. Took two shots to get through the first bit which shunted everything back. Whole focus switched to getting through this and that meant several months of pretty much non stop either work, revision or childcare. Was always going to happen at some point…

1. Pass exams in March and June. (Really a big ask). (6 month stock check after this.)

I failed the one in March and repeated in September. That meant the June one pushed back to December. Overall it’s fantastic to be done, my last set of exams ever. It did mean months of work and very few days off.

2. Be strong enough in March to not totally suck when I’m back on rock

Same couldn’t be said for now, but initially I managed to maintain a reasonable level. I got out in June and climbed a 7A that had totally shut me down a year previously. More likely a beta adjustment, but still required some level of strength.

3. To that end use habit tracker for consistency with:
    1. Restarting finger boarding again after neck/back injury break
    2. Strength conditioning stuff 2-3 times a week (because my shoulders aren’t as young as they once were)
    3. Running 1-2 times a week - would like to run 5k sub 22 mins this year
    4. Yoga 5-6 times a week ~10 mins
    5. Core 4 times a week ~ 6 mins
    6. Climb indoors if we are ever out of tier 4, but don’t rely on this!

I used the habit tracker consistently to kick the year off but stopped when I was working too much and put extra stuff on hold. To be honest this was a mistake in retrospect as I think I could have been more efficient with my time, and probably been happier for it. I kept the running going consistently which was mostly to maintain sanity. I didn’t manage sub 22 5k but got one at 22 min 27 sec, and also started longer runs which I hadn’t planned. Ran a half marathon in October in just over 2 hours so I feel like I have a bit of unfinished business there!

When I can climb again

1. Anything 7A+ or higher.
2. Anything 7b+ or higher, hopefully one of Zinc, Road Rage, Tennessee. But anything.
3. Boulder at Portland Bill at least once
4. Do any DWS, Lulworth or Portland.
5. Hopefully reschedule cancelled 2020 Font trip around autumn and get on Splatch.

This was just not to be this year. I only got on rock once for half a day which was my one 7A for the year. Goes without saying, pretty much the worst year for climbing in a long time, essentially gave it up. But I do intend to return!

Other life goals

1. Spend as much free time with baby.
2. Cut screen time, start with turning off phone notifications!
3. Build a woodie. Exams will probably stop this being first half of year, but would love to do this this year.
4. Read more. Bad at making time, so counting podcasts/audiobooks in car etc.
5. Meditate 5 mins more days than not (max time I think I could commit to and achieve right now)
6. Few mins of French on Babel more days than not.

While revision cut into family time much more this year than I liked, it should never be so bad again. The woodie project is on hold until next year as expected after the first exam failure. Am really enjoying audio books on the work commute, getting through some really interesting stuff I’d never find time to read. Meditation was good first half of year, bad recently. French I binned until some point when it might be more useful…

Ultimately I’m pretty happy with how the year turned out, some big life hurdles done with, and quite optimistic for things to come! Won’t be hard to do better climbing either!

[cheque]

Good effort everyone with even the tiniest bit of green. Good effort everyone in fact. I often feel like the skill of ending this thread with ticked goals is as much to do with being able to predict the future as it is trying hard!

Fingerboarding consistently Going to define this this time- twice a week Jan/Feb/Nov/Dec & once a week for the rest of the year.

Smashed the first one- continued it into October and March. 

Realistically I wasn’t going to tick the second part as these days my years  are divided into four dark months of training hard without any rock climbing at all, 5-6 light months of going out climbing as much as humanly possible and only a couple of inbetween months where I mix the two.

I did 51 fingerboard sessions in 2021 which is more than every previous year put together and unsurprisingly my fingers have got much stronger as a result- not just much stronger than they were at the start of the year (when I still couldn’t hang more than a few holds on my BM1000 without assistance) nor just much stronger than before my forearms atrophied following my accident but also much stronger than the halcyon days before my December 2013 PIP joint injury. Two days ago I made an absolute mockery of my previous best ever max hangs session. FUCKING COME ON 

Equal or better all my pre-injury strength PBs

Pretty close to this- the only ones I didn’t tick were running (it’s simply too high impact for me), 1-4-7 on the big campus rungs (haven’t climbed indoors since before the pandemic so haven’t been near a campus board) and weighted pull-ups (apparently I could do one with 30kg added in 2013 - I only got up to 15kg this year which was a lot of work in itself).

There were about 20 other PBs I ticked though (keeping a training diary is very useful!), mostly in the lockdown- I was on an absolute mission, worked very hard and transformed what my body can do.

The problem with this approach however was that I’d never quantified my flexibility and, like most climbers, had never felt the need to train my legs so without data to aim for these important areas got neglected until the autumn-winter following a bit of a frustrating spring & summer climbing performance-wise.

Not disappointed though- when you have to come back from the trauma I survived it’s a multi-multi-year project and you can only make so much progress in a given period of time. 97 days of training in 2021, many of which were double sessions. 

At least 10, ideally 20 routes off my *** Sub-extreme Peak Trad list

At least 1, ideally 5, E1s

Try (as in try ground-up- I’ve no plans to start headpointing) some E2s or even E3s

I spent 81 days rock climbing, 79 of which were trad, which, as a perusal of the second halves of previous editions of this thread will show, is the hardest discipline to actually go out and do. 

It’s a bit of an eye-opener looking at this though as it essentially paints me as the sort of climber I like to think I’m the opposite of- someone whose investment in training translates only to embarrassingly low-graded performances on rock. The facts don’t lie I suppose… 

I led the same number of HVSs as I did in 2020 but every single one of them was tougher than the soft touches I was seeking out then so there was definitive improvement. I also climbed most of them with less fuss , significant as of the many and varied excuses I have for being shit, my lower body strength and flexibility is definitely up there (stay tuned for Top Spankings) but really PTSD is what held me back the most. 

I tried some E1s unsuccessfully, seconded routes much harder than I led and had some great carefree days where it all felt smooth and easy but that didn’t happen much unfortunately and while I’m more in love with going out climbing than ever, in 2021 it was because I chose stress-free pleasure rather than comfort-zone-vacating achievement more often than not.

Food for thought.

[JohnM]

6 month update!

Climbing

Climb Mercy Street (8c) at Schleierwasserfall.
Didn't really try in the end. Put my clips up early in the year but never went back.
Climb another 8b+/c that gets less seepage than Mercy Street if it is a wet spring/autumn.
Got close to another 8c (Schwarzer Schwann) but then temps and humidity got high. Battle will recommence in the Autumn.[/color]
Do a good alpine route.
Not yet.
Try a route on the trad route bucket list.
I tried If 6 was 9 on top rope briefly as nearly all Birkett's routes are trad list bucket list routes to me. However, I wouldn't class it as a serious attempt with a view to leading it any time soon!
Climb somewhere sunny on big holds or tufas if/when we can travel again.
No yet.

Running/biking

Finish the Eiger Ultra and try and finish around the 18 hour mark.
Eiger was cancelled again. However, I am now registered for the Engadin Ultra. My goal time remains the same although I am not as prepared for it as I would like to be.
Bob Graham Round.
I set off on possibly the worst night in a week of very stable weather and had to quit.
Another big run/bike - something like Stubai 7 summits in one push, one of the Hoehenwegs or a big bike ride (maybe through the Dolomites and Slovenia and then back up into Carinthia.
Not yet but hopefully in August or September if I get time.

Misc/Life

Get my residency permit sorted for Austria so that I don't get "Brexited". I mean, I like fish and sovereignty and all but I am not ready to come back to the UK just yet.
All sorted!
Improve my German. Maybe some French as well so there are less awkward silences when I get left alone in a room with the girlfriend's dad.
Meh! Some organic improvement I guess but no structured learning.
Read more - 3 books would be an improvement!
Not so far.
Get more clients for my Austrian company.
This is going really well. Almost too well in the respect that my free time is now squeezed.
Try and save some money so I can retire before 80.
Yep if highly volatile and speculative investments count as saving. So far so good but that could change!
Go fishing more and try and catch a big pike (or any pike) and a fish from the species bucket list (wild brown trout, Barbel, Grayling...).
Done a bit more fishing. Caught an unexpected pike whilst fly fishing but tried for Barbel on the Ribble a couple of times but had no joy.
Booze less that 2020.
Yes but that wasn't hard. Had the best part of 3 months off booze in spring but it has crept back into my life!

Climbing

Climb Mercy Street (8c) at Schleierwasserfall.
Went back to get my clips out. The route was already dirty and wet again and I had a torrid time. Amazing route but I would need to be much stronger than the route to get it done.
Climb another 8b+/c that gets less seepage than Mercy Street if it is a wet spring/autumn.
Got close to another 8c (Schwarzer Schwann) but then temps and humidity got high. Battle will recommence in the Autumn - Never went back in Autumn. I was either away or the weather was crap.
Do a good alpine route.
Still no - my excuse is that I don't have a partner. All my current partners have no interest in alpine routes after horror shows in the past. However, if I really wanted to do something I would make more effort to find someone else keen I guess. Maybe the motivation isn't really there.
Try a route on the trad route bucket list.
I tried If 6 was 9 on top rope briefly as nearly all Birkett's routes are trad list bucket list routes to me. However, I wouldn't class it as a serious attempt with a view to leading it any time soon!
Climb somewhere sunny on big holds or tufas if/when we can travel again.
Yes. I had a trip to Kalymnos in October. It reminded how much fun this style of climbing is but I didn't have the fitness to take full advantage.

Running/biking

Finish the Eiger Ultra and try and finish around the 18 hour mark.
I did the Engadin Ultra (105km 5700m) instead as the Eiger was cancelled again.
Bob Graham Round.
I set off on possibly the worst night in a week of very stable weather and had to quit.
Another big run/bike - something like Stubai 7 summits in one push, one of the Hoehenwegs or a big bike ride (maybe through the Dolomites and Slovenia and then back up into Carinthia.
Didn't get time in the end.

Misc/Life

Get my residency permit sorted for Austria so that I don't get "Brexited". I mean, I like fish and sovereignty and all but I am not ready to come back to the UK just yet.
All sorted!
Improve my German. Maybe some French as well so there are less awkward silences when I get left alone in a room with the girlfriend's dad.
Meh! Some organic improvement I guess but no structured learning.
Read more - 3 books would be an improvement!
Nope
Get more clients for my Austrian company.
This is going really well. Almost too well in the respect that my free time is now squeezed.
Try and save some money so I can retire before 80.
Did ok
Go fishing more and try and catch a big pike (or any pike) and a fish from the species bucket list (wild brown trout, Barbel, Grayling...).
Did a lot more fishing this year which I really enjoy as a contrast to climbing and running etc. Caught a pretty decent pike in Windermere over Xmas and a specimen Ferox trout which are relatively rare and hard to catch.
Booze less that 2020.
Bit of a fail tbh. Had a few months off in Spring but by Autumn I was having a least one wine or beer nearly every night. Still remains a go to option to unwind after work for me after sport.

[cheque]

…the only ones I didn’t tick were running (it’s simply too high impact for me), 1-4-7 on the big campus rungs (haven’t climbed indoors since before the pandemic so haven’t been near a campus board) and weighted pull-ups

Correction to this having looked at my diaries again today- it’s 1-3-5 I used to be able to do on the campus board, not 1-4-7.