Tales of a Fourth Grade Nothing

Slightly less successful climbing session: I took a fall relatively early on a warm-up boulder and caught my thumb, ripping the nail in the process. I mopped up the blood, washed everything out, and switched to route climbing for the rest of the afternoon. Rather to my surprise, I made pretty good progress: obviously my open-hand strength has improved to the point where I don't need to pinch the hell out of the holds on easier routes.

Later in the evening, I headed walked down to the river to meet the others for the Sunday quiz at the Puerto lounge. We had a full-strength team, with P&J providing some extra intellectual firepower, which definitely helped when a tricky round on farm animals came up. Once again we were without Yorkshire Nick, but the alternate quizmaster was on much better form than last time and zipped through the rounds as fairly quickly, avoiding the problem of adding up the scores at the end by asking the teams to tot things up as they went along.

We scored highly as we went along — the team whose answers we were marking, another of the regulars, changed the name on their sheet to "The Wooden Spoons' Holiday Fund" once they began to suspect we might win. Sure enough, we finished ten points ahead of the second placed team and went home clothed in glory. Or, in my case, clothed in a windproof jacket, hood up against the rather less than lovely weather...

What was supposed to be an easy climbing session turned into something a bit more serious when I bumped into Richard. He not only persuaded me to abandon routes in favour of bouldering, but also picked all the boulders so I climbed much harder than normal. Very much to my surprise — I don't feel like I've been on particularly good bouldering form of late — I managed to send almost everything I tried; proof positive that most of my problems are psychological rather than physical or technical...

It being a Saturday, I felt more than a little guilty at missing parkrun so I went out for an extra long morning run. I didn't quite make it to Chateau Sainte Michelle, but I was pretty close by the time I turned back to return to Redmond. During the run I saw a bald eagle flying fairly low over the river. I wasn't entirely surprised — I'd seen something that looked like an awful lot like an eyrie on one of the power pylons — but it was still a pretty damn awesome thing to see!

After spending the morning exploring Redmond Old Town and the Saturday Market — conveniently located in the same place as the mini version staged for CUG — I decided to walk the four or so miles to the local branch of Vertical World. Despite getting mildly lost on the way — I turned right instead of left and found myself at the start of the powerline trail which I'd run a few days ago — I located the centre in an industrial building tucked away at the back.

After signing in — a guy sitting on a bench by entry said, "After going through all that, you ought to have clearance to meet the president!" — I hired some rather slippy shoes — this is not to dis Vertical World: using someone else's shoes is always a bad experience — and got on with some bouldering. After going through a warm-up, which was enough to persuade me I needed a chalk bag — which they lent me for free! — I worked up to the point where I crushed a bunch of their V5s. I'm not entirely surprised because it matches comfort zone, but you never know how one centre's grading is going to carry over to another and if you're not familiar with the house style, it sometimes takes a while to get to the point where you can send stuff with confidence.

I didn't try any routes because I didn't notice that they had auto-belays until I'd signed in for bouldering. But when I checked the grades and attempting a quick conversion from YDS to French grades, I decided I probably wasn't missing anything and stuck with my original plan. After putting a few hours, I started to feel tired. Acutely aware of the walk home — which, coming on top of the morning's run, was definitely a contributing factor to the tiredness — I called it a day and headed back to the hotel where I started repacking my stuff for the return to the UK.

Slightly against my better judgement, I decided to spend the afternoon trying some of the new boulder problems at the Quay. The place wasn't too busy when I arrived and I was lucky enough to bump into a group of friends who were also working their way through the new set. As ever, we divided the problems by climbing style: I made very short work of a couple of very balancey, technical problems; they made more headway with the reacher, more powerful boulders; and all of us struggled with a supposedly easy problem featuring a very smeary starting move.

Met up with P&D for a bouldering session at the Quay while the centre was quiet. We put in a couple of hours and I'm pretty sure they enjoyed themselves, despite a certain amount of frustration at not being in full-on climbing condition — they've both had a year or more off.

The focus on strength and stamina training over the last couple of weeks really came into its own today when I surprised myself by flashing almost all the new boulders below 7A.

I made hard work a 6A after mis-reading the instructions: I started with matched hands on a sloper, a heel hook in, cranked hard on it to go up for a pinch, and only then went for the positive side-pull which was one of the intended starting holds. Not that it mattered. I flashed the problem and it provided with two solid lessons: that I can get an awful lot of power behind a heel hook; and that I ought to check the starting instructions before pulling on to anything!

After a couple of hours, I still had enough left in the tank to finish with 10-12 routes on the auto-belays, down-climbing the easier stuff to get a bit of training in. I even found time to work on my current project, a tricky series of hard slopers, which, to my delight, had been upgraded from 6c to 7a...

Very hot and humid evening working some training boulders and easy routes. I made a first attempt at the new circuit board and made it to the mid-thirties on my first go, only to find that I'd spent so much time hanging around trying to find the next hold that every subsequent attempt ended at around the twenty mark. I'm also not convinced the usual odd-right and even-left numbering works correctly for the mid section of the easy circuit; either than or the section is intended to feature an extreme set of crossovers.

Highly agreeable afternoon of bouldering that has left me content but bruised — I smacked my elbow into something on a training board and knocked my knee against goodess knows what somewhere along the line. I got talked into trying a problem with a dyno which, after several failed attempts, I nailed extremely satisfactorily. I also worked up a beta for a horribly roof problem composed entirely of slopers with a tricky middle section and a burly finish; but by the time I'd got everything straight, I discovered I was too tired to link the individual moves.

An enjoyable evening of bouldering, with a couple of new things ticked off. Rather to my surprise I made easy work of a problem on the 40 degree board, only wimping out when the last move required me to hold a pinch at the very top point. Walking home was still cold — although not quite as cold as Tuesday, which was positively arctic! — and it's hard to believe that we're almost at the end of May.

To Warwick university for a spot of post-party sports the morning. Tried out some of the boulder problems, which were enjoyable despite their reachiness. I got talking to someone who'd been climbing for over 50 years and who was still working away to improve his strength and technique.

It was interesting talking to him about trad which he said was very different to sport climbing, especially for people who'd learnt in the days before cams and hexes became available. He said trad required two completely different modes of thinking: while you were placing the gear, you needed to be absolutely focused on making it as safe as possible; but as soon as you started moving again you needed to forget about the quality of the protection and instead concentrate on the climbing.