Catch up

Been a bust few weeks!

Neal (aka Usual Suspect) has been over clipping bolts with Caroline and meself at the jewel in the crown of uk sports climbing... Malham (more from me on that soon)

I've been keeping up with work (just about!)

and i've been trying to work on a load of reviews and crag articles to post up on Team Geared Up.com after being invited to start posting there (Who'd have thunk people would actually ASK me to waffle!?)

Plus theres been education and cross-curricular courses for me to attend and more marking than can be healthy!

The Joys!

less than 2 weeks to Siurana!

:)

Training...

It's dark in the mornings now, theres a frost when we go for our AM runs before work... comming home i change into shorts and trainers and race to try and finish our evening sessions on the cannal path before the light fades and we retreat back to the warmth of number 5. The wall training is going well. Fingers are adapting to the regular wear. The regular routine of climb, chalk, sweat, hang, blister and sanding off the lumps of hard skin while scrubbing away the ground in chalk. Theres a goal behind all this... Siurana in 3 weeks!

More MacLeod Motivation

Within the last 2 or 3 weeks Dave's blog has been packed with a string of very impressive, very fast, very hard trad repeats in the lake district. Not content with his own ground breaking first ascents he has gone about repeating any and all hard trad lines he can travel to this year... it's been truely inspirational to follow. He takes on routes of all styles and rock types from Grit E10 (down grading to E7 or 8), North Wales E9 (Trauma), Mournes E10 (Divided Years down graded to MacLeod E8!) and now repeating A rake of Dave Birketts testpieces including Impact Day E8 6c, Caution E8 6c, Dawes Rides a Shovelhead E8 6c and If Six Was Nine, E9 6c. Also Dave has announced the launch of the new committed DVD.... I have to admitt that recently i've gone off following the whole climbing mags and media rubbish but i'm keen to check this one out.

Check it out!

Awesome interview

This week i stumbled on an interview with Chris Sharma about his climbing and life in general - not having much other than a car in europe and a car in the states with a rack of draws, harness and rope in each and loads of mates around the world where he can crash for a while while he passes through en-route to his next project.... makes for some great reading

Check it out!

"There is something both graceful and barbaric in Sharma's climbing. He couples a child-like playfulness with ferocious grit that leaves even his peers in awe and the rest of us inspired to reach a little higher and hang on a little longer.


When you do hard routes, you have to try hard. They’re not easy routes. You have to give everything you have. You have to get totally animalistic. When you’re super pumped, I have to yell to bear down."

Legends

This is a bit of a weird one but while driving to and from work I tune into Radio One. The last couple of weeks they’ve been celebrating 40 years of broadcasting by getting modern artists to come in and cover a famous track from each year between now and 1967. I never bothered with many of them until I heard the Foo Fighters cover McCartney’s “Band on the Run”! Class!! Check it out! These guys can do no wrong as far as I’m concerned!

List of Covers