I’m due two weeks of PC - a week of thrashing myself at the wall and then my first week in Margalef. But on reflection, this trip has kind of been the opposite of a performance / goal-orientated tick mission so it’s seems a bit silly to talk about it in those terms.
I’d abandoned the idea of actually doing anything like this after a year full of stresses (moving out of house without another one to move into, finally separating, work and money woes, etc), drinking and eating too much, no outside climbing since Easter, 20kg heavier than my last ok climbing season.
But a month or two ago Duncan persuaded me that I could treat a trip as the start of next year’s campaign, vs something that I’d trained manically and specifically for.
And after a week (and despite a couple of days lost to rain at the start) it has so far been the best trip I can remember for years. I’ve felt absolutely no pressure, and as a result I’ve enjoyed ever since inch of (mostly) hard-won rock that I’ve managed to haul myself up. I think I fell off a 6a on the first day, but also realised that my footwork (esp on little pockets) was completely hopeless and improving that has been a delight.
I managed a 6c at the Lab yesterday with Buster and Ted, which took a couple of goes to realise that trying to do it the same way as a micro Japanese 9a wad probably wasn’t the best plan. Felt like a climber again after that.
Have belayed people on various impressive things, inc a few session with Buster on FRFM, which has been pretty awesome.
Have 2 more weeks. Definitely going to try some harder things now, and maybe even something way too hard for this trip - mainly because it doesn’t feel like I’m wasting any time and I’m just as happy to learn about something I might manage next time as I am fighting up something in a session. Everyone here seems to have a long term project anyway.
I’m the only person camping in a tent (everyone else is in vans of varying degrees of luxury) and my bad shoulder was keeping me a leave at night, but seems to be improving now. Skin a bit fucked but probably nothing unusual here.
Onwards…
(For a couple of days last week, the median top RP grade of the three Brits (inc me) in the campsite was 9a+, but alas the others have moved on and I’ve not been able to up my game sufficiently to maintain that metric.)
