M - A load of stretching and some press ups and dips in the garden, lovely. Feeling a bit broken after continually doing deep left hand lock offs on Under the Bridge on Sunday, major DOMs all down my left hand side.
T - Ruabon for a bit of esoterica hunting. We wanted to try Flyboy 7b+, a stupidly steep (40 degrees ish) piece of old quarried sandstone. Needed a really good clean but what a fun piece of climbing. Campusing to start with and then every hold is an absolute bucket. Had a couple of RPs messing up in different ways and then my mate got it done. The pressure was then on with the light fading and knowing it would be hard to find another belay but I managed to hold it together. Nice to get a route tick under my belt this year. The Clwyd's version of Comedy!
W - Half a max hangs session at +31kg. All complete, nice to still be hitting the same scores after a brief hiatus from the fingerboard. Then an hour or so on the board, trying projects at first and making progress with one of them. Finished with trialling some foot on laddering on various holds as a form of upper end aerobic training. This seemed to work pretty well and I think will be a good tool in getting back into route shape over the next month or so.
T - Gorge with Ally. The plan was to try Under the Bridge for a bit and then take a look at one of the Grand Canyon extensions. Was getting frustratingly close to the tick though so just ended up bouldering the whole session. I couldn’t settle on a sequence after almost holding the jump move in a couple of different ways. Ended up finding a knee bar under the bulge to control the swing and just about held it together on what I thought was a pretty unsatisfying finish. Nice to get this closed off so I can actually focus on routes when I’m down at the Gorge now. The moves are decent but I thought the line was a bit crap. I also found it harder than Be Ruthless, from my (very) limited experience I reckon this might creep in at 7C with BR maybe high 7B+? Who knows.
F - Rest. Feeling very battered, left hand side DOMs like before and weirdly a sore right hamstring from a really intensive toe move yesterday.
S - LPT. One of my main aims this year is to get some good ticks down here after somehow barely climbing here before. Decided to have a look at Mussel Beach and had a couple of goes up. My first taste of the steep section here and it is so much better than the rest of the crag (i.e. less sharp!). Really enjoyed it and managed to get all the moves bar one on the lower crux which I skipped pretty quickly not feeling warmed up enough and one on the upper crux when I sandbagged myself by clipping the rope across the key hold. I’ll know for next time! Keen to put some more time into this.
S - A much needed rest. Probably some stretching later.
A good week mostly on rock with a couple of nice ticks. My whole body is feeling pretty broken now though so I think an easier week with lots of stretching/mobility/conditioning is in order. The DIP joint of my right middle finger was also giving some worrying twinges yesterday so I want to give that a chance to settle down.
