Seaside and TCA Bristol

I had a lovely weekend in Torquay with Pete and the 'in-laws'. Fresh sea air, some sunshine and good food.

We went to The Climbing Academy a new bouldering wall in Bristol for training. Lots of fun blocs, colour coded into circuits. We had a warm welcome - friendly staff and locals, and underfloor heating.

Absolutely no need for my leg warmers.

I tried several of the blocs on the hardest circuit. Quite a range of grades from easy flashes to long, hard thuggy ones that I couldn't quite get. Can't comment on grades as I'm naff at that. A good variety of styles. I decided to do several of the blocs with 'bunch of grape' style sloper holds and enjoyed swinging across the long roof.

SWBL

I had a good Friday night league comp at the works coming 2nd on the night. This placed me 2nd in the SWBL and 4th in the works league having missed a round. I got furthest up the Percy's special women's problem, but didn't top it so no £50 spot prize :-(

A team training weekend at the Awesome Wall Stockport followed. We did super hard problems on the Saturday and had a mock comp on the Sunday. The Earl set some fun blocs to break ourselves on. I won the semi and the final. I'm nicely tired and achy now :-))

Has anyone got any spare fingertips?

Foundry League

It was the last round of the Foundry League last night. Another set of cracking blocs. Simon said that everyone left with a smile on their face.

The results are out already. I won :-)

The Foundry has a blog where they are posting info, results etc. This includes the SWBL for which the last round is on the 13th Feb at the works.

Works League

Another good set of blocs. I got onto the steep sections a bit late and powered out. Oops. I had random bursts of energy. These were on my repeat goes typically. I was therefore dropping points left right and centre, but had a good workout and lots of fun.

I went back on Sunday and didn't top any more comp blocs. I did all the new volume blocs - some bold moves and flicks required, along with multiple kneebars on a brown :-)

Fitness First supplied me and a mate with a free taster session on Saturday. My mate ran about 10km whilst I ran for 10mins to warm up for a weights session. The assisted pull-up/dip machine seems a good way of working the one armers, but I got some strange looks from the locals in Chesterfield!

Steam room seemed the logical option to finish the session. I left feeling pampered, but could feel the effects climbing on Sunday.

Flapper

Had a really good session at the Matrix today. Rob Napier and Karl Bacon set the last comp routes. They're good. I was working some that I hadn't done in the comp. I topped two more and made considerable advancements on two others. But unfortunately also gained a big flapper on my little finger.

Web cams are awkward to capture images of little fingers in.

Down in Byker...

It's team training and league season. A lot of the wall leagues fall in the same weeks as each other and also on the same weeks as team training so I've been climbing my socks off recently.

The last team training weekend was at the newly opened Climb Newcastle in Byker Village. Andy Earl took us through periodisation of training, campus boarding and fingerboarding. The main features of the weekend for me were two bumper sessions of comp difficulty blocs. A big workout of 15 on the first day and 8 on the second, along with trying the men's blocs and revisiting the blocs from the day before.

There is a really good mix of styles of climbing in the setting. I got a dyno - hurrah. Also some big slopey moves. Some of the fingery problems were so crimpy and small that I was beginning to wonder if this was my strength after all. Lots of grimacing for the top!

Monday's Foundry league felt steep after all this with my arms not really pulling through and my fingers all jelly-like.

Mountain Biking

Hooray, I went mountain biking for the first time in months and months... ow, I'm sure my saddle wasn't that uncomfortable.

Nine of us stayed in a bunk house in North Wales. A recipe for a great weekend. We did the MBR trail at Coed-y-Brenin and the Marin trail at Llanwrst. I'm a bit slow on the uphills (sorry guys) but managed to scare myself on some of the downhills. Big grin, point and shoot stuff screaming like the girl I am when only just missing tree stumps etc.

Cheers to Lex the birthday boy.