rginns blog

29/01/12 - I've somehow managed to get my foot damaged... I have a red painful swelling on the ball of my foot that has got progressively worse since Thursday. I don't remember knocking it or straining it or anything, and it feels like it could be an infection or something. Nice. Am seeing a doctor this afternoon, so we'll see what happens. Walking is painful, annoyingly. 30/01/12 - edit: it appears I have a probable stress fracture of my second toe. Nothing can be done about it apparantly, just follow the 'if it hurts, don't do it' advice. Going to see what it stands up to on the board tonight before deciding if I'm going climbing tomorrow... I'm hoping it'll not be too bad, but too much landing on it may be counter-productive. I'm pretty sure I know when I did it too, it must have been on last weeks installation - I had to jump off some racking and landed a bit awkwardly. I'm surprised I didn't get any real pain until the next day thou

I've been listening to the audio cd of Alan Partridge's autobiography recently with immense enjoyment. Perfect driving listening. Anyway, this week I've managed to get on the board twice, for about 45 minutes each time. No great training sessions, but enough to feel like I'm making forward progress, that's for sure. Consistency is key to this, so I need to keep it up. Aside from the circuit of usual problems, I pretty much just randomly try moves that I think I can't do, then link them with others, making it up as I go along. Whilst this is enjoyable, I fear the lack of structure may be inhibiting... So how do you effectively train on a woody? I guess each session needs to concentrate on one particular set of moves or position (i.e. open vs twisting, crimps vs slopers), or maybe a set duration i.e. repeaters of 25 continuous moves (about 6 laps of a board this size!!!) or something of this order. I don't know, but at the moment I'm quite happy to just m

So tonight I went to West View with JB. It was good to catch up , and the order of the day was mileage, no particular aims. Now its been probably over a year since I've tied on, so it was refreshing to have a change of scene. We warmed up on lots of easy routes and as the evening wore on it became increasingly busy. I haven't been to WV for quite a while, and in spite of it being rammed it was still relatively easy to get to routes. Having warmed up, I was quite pleased to get up a 6b+, without it feeling particularly difficult at all- ok, so it was on a rope, not leading, but I'm happy with that. After an hour or two we did a bit of bouldering, doing a few V2 and 3s I managed to flash both a V4 and a V5, the first time I've ever done that I think. Looks like the board may start to be paying dividends... Then time was called and we left ... All in all a good evening, good climbing and some good company. .

I've had a couple of fairly fruitful board sessions over the past couple of weeks, having made a concerted effort to try and get on the board even if it's only for half an hour or so to get the arms going. The result is that I've got a reasonable circuit going that I can get on relatively regularly and this should start to bring gains in a couple of weeks or so. Anyway, I managed to get out up to Knowle Heights quarry yesterday after a cracking forecast. R-man and GCW were both busy, so I headed up there on my own, arriving later than anticipated. The weather was baltic, but the crag was actually in full sun, so although it was chilly, it wasn't too unpleasant. I set about trying the overhang which was the main aim. The crux seems to be going from the undercut crack (of which the right hand hold is now wider due to crumbling rock) up to a high small crimp, matching, and then somehow getting a high foot to go for the break. This felt nails to me, probably as it targets m