Oh yeah... Trad

Ooppps! Well what can I say? My lifestyle seems to be so erratic and un-planable lately that I didn't want to commit to any specific trad goals this year - I’m not giving up on Trad but I think I’m seeing it more in perspective or something. Basically I want to climb harder, more often - that involves Sport climbing, bouldering and training and lots of it... when I get a few weeks or weekends at trad crags I plan on using any gains I’ve experienced from sport climbing to improve my trad, obviously. So if I was to list my trad goals they would be to lead (preferably onsight) an E7 or headpoint E8 - but as for which routes and when I'm gonna do them, I can't say. Ethics don't come into it really - I’ve always not really had any problems dealing with the usual limiting factor in Trad - Head Games. In fact I usually push myself beyond my physical limits on trad due to a lack of head games, or my controlling of them. Instead I find what has always held me back was my strength, fitness and weight. Last year I onsighted some E6's (one in less than ideal conditions...Rain!) and managed to onsight some fairly challenging stamina cracks and powerful E5 6b's. But they didn't feel as hard as they used to... not by a long shot! I was doing laps on a route in Dalkey that I couldn't even begin to work a few years ago (and that was seeping through it's crux holds too!) and I had finally sent the remaining line in the burren that I had failed to lead cleanly (that one as a warm up!) - basically people who still spout on about ethics (or lack of) are being a bit short sighted - only with sufficient experience of hard climbing on any medium can true, pure ethics be displayed on the hardest trad lines. That means an onsight, ground-up ascent with full rack and no beta... thats the goal, but to achieve it im gonna clip a exceedingly large amount of shiny bolts! :)

Goals 2008

Well it's been a while in the shaping - the years in the title are irrelevant as it's not a purely annual thing - it's just time. I began 2007 with some fairly hefty challenges, namely:

climb 7c at Dinbren - Try an E8 this year- Run a sub 2min 800m this summer- Run a 16min splash 5km this summer- Try an 8a - Take more pictures- Phone a friend

Now it's time to review things...

• I managed to redpoint 2 8a's (one at Dinbren)
• I lead routes of 7c both here and in France (2 of which 2nd go, narrowly missing the OS)
• I played on a total of 6 different routes up to 8a+ in both Spain and France and could lead them in sections fairly quickly, although I never redpointed them.
• I onsighted up to 7b+
• I flashed a V8 and a V7 boulder problem
• I've onsighted E6 and toproped an E8
• I have maintained a weekly running mileage above 55 mpw since August

What does all this translate to? Well firstly I can see I have progressed a bit but I really have to work on my redpointing tactics if I am going to get the most out of myself. Spain was a prize example - I was trashed from the sheer volume of climbing 7's that I’d no skin or energy left to redpoint an 8! Although I could lead it in two sections within a days work. I need some projects, and I need the time and stability to afford me the chance to work them - hard! Regarding running I’m taking a different approach - volume of miles and focusing on middle distance road races - I just want to get fitter and faster - simple.

So now, what do I want to try and achieve this time around?

• Redpoint 3 more 8a's
• work an 8b
• boulder V10
• build up to 15 finger tip pull-ups on my board
• Increase the weekly mileage to at least 70 mpw and maintain it there

This may not sound too concise or well thought-out but it's all I’ve got. I just need to get my teeth into something and then plough away at it till I send it... I’ll update as and when I feel the need but for now I’ve made my mark in the sand as it were :)

Legend

The other day I got a text from a friend about a slide show happening on Wednesday night at a local pub - I’d been feeling the lack of anything resembling a social life for a while now so jumped at the opportunity! We arrived late to the back of a darkened and packed function room with half the people standing, staring at the slides on show - the speaker? John Dunne.

I like his style - his talk and show was nicely pitched and didn't sound like a string of ego-massaging stories and he seemed all-to quick to put his achievements in place but he came across as just very, very sound and down to earth! With pictures from everywhere from Grit, Mournes, North Wales, Pembroke, France, Spain, all over the States, China, Himalayas - John recapped on a career full of climbing. He loves to make a joke of the controversy surrounding his hard trad leads - my favourite line running something like this...

"well it was definitely hard, and I’d spent longer on this than on anything else I’d ever climbed so once it was done I had to give it a cool name and a grade.... well I have never struggled with the name part but the grade, well lets just say that the 1st assentionist can never exactly get the grade right because you've always got the fact looming over you that this has never been done before, once you've done it others KNOW it's possible... so I could have given it 8c+ or 9a... no competition then really is there?!" he quipped with a laugh "That'll get there tongues flappin'!".

He took that stance with all of his new routes, why not encourage interest and repeats by putting the highest grade on a route and have the grade settle after a few repeats? Surprisingly he estimated only around 100 new routes - and his perspective on his reasons and motivation for new routing was refreshing. He had climbed all the existing lines at his local crag and there were beautiful features and definite lines just waiting to be lead. He established new routes out of necessity! Although he never made any real effort to defend any of his route grades, he made no bones about his belief in the high quality of all his routes (except Deitrius, E8, 6c choss pile on the little Orme, Llandudno). He talked openly about the recent repeats and subsequent downgrading of some of his lines like Divided Years and Breathless by Birkett and MacLeod and seemed more pleased that all climbers involved remarked on the exceptional quality of the lines and felt the grade a secondary issue.

His pictures and stories covered all types of climbing - bouldering, sport, trad, big wall, alpine.... but it was interesting to hear his opinions of how his focus has shifted between the different aspects throughout the years. Initially he began on Grit but soon focused on Yorkshire Limestone - This he attributes all of his hard trad climbing to. If you can climb 8b or higher on limestone you can prepare for and lead a necky 8a (referring to Parthian shot, E9 7a). now he is finding himself wanting to push his sport climbing again and with a property in France he finished with a slide of Ceuse - he never mentioned the name but he just said to the audience that he was at a point where he wanted to push his physical limits safely and when you have crags like this in France with a lifetime of climbing on them why look further.... indeed

Anyway - it was a brilliant show and another valuable top up in motivation (as if I need any more!).

Have a look at some of the pictures at the link below....

http://www.johndunneclimbing.com/html/framesset.html

Filters and fool rooms

I like to think of myself as being fairly open minded and kinda aware of whats possible... but of course we are all the results of our lifes up to this point and as such have been programmed into various levels of responses, expectations, perceptions, ambitions etc... this is a fairly long way of talking about one of my "definitions", if you will being shattered and the alteration of one of my mental filters. When people talk about their home wall or training board i have come to picture some sort of lovingly crafted piece of steepness stuck in some garage, shed or spare room and sparsely dotted with a variety of home-made and free holds that can paint a picture of the ergonomic developments of climbing hold manufacture through the ages (or inversly the ammount of indoor induced tendon injuries! think of all the old, circa late 80's, sharp pockets and crimpers!). Plywood kickboards dirtied by 1000's of foot placements over the years etc... But not this! No way would i consider THIS a home wall! Now way a private wall! It's bigger than most IBL venues fer christs sake!! A friend emailed me this link to a video of a strong local couples home training facility, built in their barn. I was stunned and it has altered my perceptions of what can be done. Oh... and it explains how they climb so hard! Alison alone has ticked numerous 8a's or maybe even harder!

Check this out!

This weekend

Well it's snowing here and i've a 5 mile road race tomorrow near Crew. Er.... other than a tonne of work and training that has to get done thats about the sum of all my plans for this weekend :) Not bad really. Theres loads going on in school that i think i'll blog about in more detail in another post (coz it's worth it!) and the running training has resumed with gusto after the rocky start we've had between illness and weather this year - last week saw us clocking up a considerable mileage between 5am 6/7 mile runs and some grueling pm fartlec or threshold 10 milers! I'm tired but feeling good coz i'm back training! It is a drug. I'm finding everything in my life seems to be strongly connected with my ammount of focus at the time - I'm really trying to get things done and it's showing through my running, climbing training, work, finances, sence of well being, everything! Lets hope it lasts...

Still gotta write about some goal setting...hmmmm

Oh, and almost a year to the day since i began this blog thing..... made some interesting viewing to skim back through some of the older posts - can't believe all that was in a year!!! and over 4000 visits to the blog since i added the counter - don't know if thats a good or bad statistic but it's supprising all the same :)