rginns blog

Work has been mad busy of late, I seem to be away almost every week so keeping any consistency with climbing is proving challenging. Add to that restaurants, beers and pub grub that comes along wth working away and it's a recipe for becoming a fat worse punter. The upside is I sometimes get to different walls or crags, but only if I finish early normally. However, all of this needs to change, as I have now booked the gite for next years Font trip - woohoo! YYFY! I've not been for a couple of years, so it's about time. 5 definites so far and I quite fancy getting a van and bombing it down instead of faffing about with planes and hire cars. Randomly, it's the same week that GCW, Nik and some others are going, although being the school holidays I guess there was a good chance. It would be good to get a few of us for a crushing session. So, this is just over 4 months away, which means I've got to get fit over Christmas ready for Font. As well as this, I need to start

Went to Preston tonight, as I'd planned to meet G-man and Nik was coming along too. I arrived earlier than I anticipated and started off by traversing around the vertical walls to warm up, spending quite a long time warming up - this was because when I came to West View last week I didn't warm up at all and was beasted after 45 minutes. After warming up I tried a couple of the V3s, which felt easy, so thought i'd work my way through the V4's - I managed to get through all but 2 of the V4s flashing about half of them. I moved on to the V5s one by one, but really couldn't touch them. G and Nik turned up after a while and were both up for bouldering. G's mate Felix was there too. G and Nik both warmed up on a couple of easys and then started to crush - V6s, 7s and more, pretty impressive. I feel the need to train... Nik especially seemed to beast everything in site and G was no slouch. I flailed about for a bit on some more V5s getting absolutely nowhere except m

Sunday I went to Thorn crag. I was on me tod as everyone else seemed to have better things to do than walk uphill for half an hour with rain imminent, but anyway I decided to head up there to crack the two lines on the list, Elemental and Burnt Heather. The hangover was fairly readily despatched by the walk in, which is still as brutal as it's ever been, but the sun was really trying to burn through the clouds. The great thing about Thorn crag is that it really is pretty desolate. The moorland setting is awesome, and as luck would have it the visibility was great, the sea was in clear view, twinkling in the far off sunlight. There were a few game birds flitting about in flocks, but apart from that, there was not a soul in sight. It had been raining on my way up the M6 which didn't bode well, but by the time I reached the crag it wasn't as damp as I thought. the rock however was wet. This was ok by my book as a rest was the order of the day. The hangover was coming back with

No, unfortunately not ticking of problems, rather time. Time, the inexorable ticking of time . Well, it truly is now the indoor season. In the week at least, and especially in this rain. Time to get strong for the briefest window of opportunity for any outdoor crushage. I still have quite a bit of work to do if I am to work my way through this years list, especially when you bear in mind there are only 7 weeks or so before the end of 2009... The last week or go have not yielded great things from Mr Ginns, in spite of hopeless yet optmistic aspirations, however there does, at least, seem to be some regularity to climbing which may or may not translate into crushing prowess at some unspecified point in the future. Another two sessions at Broughton have confirmed my current competency at around 'broughton 5c+', which I like to think is approximately V12, but alas I dare say it is slightly less... The last 3 sessions I have reached this point which if nothing else is consistent. To

Went to Broughton after work today for the first time this winter. The first of many no doubt. as I expected, the wall was still as steep as it ever was, and just as unremitting, or should I say unrelenting. I have no idea whereabouts I am in terms of the wall as it has been so long since being there, so I decided to work my way through the grades to see how I would fare. Starting at 5a,5a+,5b,5b+,5c, I got to 5c+ and couldn't get any further. Not altogether disappointing. Especially bearing in mind you can add a grade or two to bring it in line with other walls in the area... I can't expect to be at the top of my game having done relatively little climbing indoors this year. One thing I did notice was a significant lack of stamina. Give it a month however, and it'll come back I'm sure. It's a hard task-master but pretty much the best wall in the North west... Proper old skool.