I seem to have entirely failed to keep my blog up to date. Ah well! I’m not going to recount all I’ve missed, that might take too long. Instead I’ll continue as I was going….

TARGETS! I’ve decided my targets for 09:

1) Lead a 7b. Ouch. I’ve managed a couple of 7a’s in the past year, and they’ve remained hard, but I’ve not been able to push harder than that. I really need to work on pushing through this and get to the next level, hence the upgrade!
2) Lead outdoors. I’ve really failed to do much outdoor climbing since I’ve started, mostly due to the weather. However, I’ve already made it out this year (see below) and I really enjoyed it. I’ve not actually seconded or lead on one of my excusions, so it seems a good target.
3) Score 100 points in a bouldering competition. This is a tough one. It will really involve a step up in gear on my previous bouldering comp scores. Cross fingers eh?
4) Take more photos and videos of climbs, especially outdoors!

So, what else has been happening? Quite a bit of climbing! Last weekend saw me climbing on Friday, Saturday and spending the whole glorious, sunny day in the Peaks climbing. I’m still fairly achy from it now, but it been great. My little circle of climbing associates has a new person in it (Hi Kiri if you read this!) who is encouraging more climbing which is good. Sunday in the peaks was all her fault and it was great. We started in Stoney Middleton, climbing on Morning Crack which was HARD, we then ended up at Baslow Edge doing three more climbs. Central Crack was really demanding for me, needing a really strong layback to get up it, which I’m really not comfortable with doing but managed. The top bit involved me doing a really inelegent belly flop. I think I’ll try harder to avoid that next time!

What about indoors? Part of trying to hit those above targets has meant I’m changing my approach a little. I’ve starting doing stamina climbs once a week, where we do 3 climbs in succession, or an Up, Down, Up climb. I’m also aiming to climb on something far outside my grade every week to try and push myself.

Videos/Photos-wise, check this out:

This is Simon completing a nice over hanging 6b at The Foundry.