...liberally coated in butter, engine oil and lard and then deep fried - if you had used said culinary masterpiece to brush the sidepulls on Strawberries at Curbar today then it wouldn't have felt any harder. However I digress slightly so I shall backtrack a few hours and start at the beginning.
Today I woke up and felt confident about doing Strawberries - quite why I don't know but that was the case so after a couple of coffees I set off to Curbar in a rad and syked mood to send. Did the usual warm up problems - the traverse and back on the other side of the Trackside boulder, the mantle\undercut problem, the three pocket problem and the one on the big holds to the right of that. All was going strangely well - the footwork was good and the friction while not exactly great was feeling OK. Still feeling rad and syked I cleaned off the holds for Strawberries, rolled up a quick tab, sat in the sunshine and pulled on my shoes,. Having done that I worked out the sequence again just to make sure it was right in my head, gave the holds a last brush and tried it out.
It felt awful - truly, truly awful - I could get to the higher sidepull with my left about half the time but from there it was time to forget it - you could just feel it sliding off and there was no way you could get the necessary leverage on it for the move up to the jug. Still it will be there another time and I still went home happy - I have finally managed to get a decent sequence to the three pocket problem which means I can semi-static to the third pocket in control now instead of it being an all out slap and I got introduced to a problem that I think is called "The Eyes" (to the left of the problem Trackside). Now this feels like a really nice problem and it will be good to have that to project alongside Strawberries but will require better conditions to get the bottom section wired and the top doesn't look too much of a gimme either. Also starting to get ideas re: Trackside itself and I still have The Ultimate Gritstone Experience to do - bring on the cooler temps - the rad and syke seems to be back!
Today I woke up and felt confident about doing Strawberries - quite why I don't know but that was the case so after a couple of coffees I set off to Curbar in a rad and syked mood to send. Did the usual warm up problems - the traverse and back on the other side of the Trackside boulder, the mantle\undercut problem, the three pocket problem and the one on the big holds to the right of that. All was going strangely well - the footwork was good and the friction while not exactly great was feeling OK. Still feeling rad and syked I cleaned off the holds for Strawberries, rolled up a quick tab, sat in the sunshine and pulled on my shoes,. Having done that I worked out the sequence again just to make sure it was right in my head, gave the holds a last brush and tried it out.
It felt awful - truly, truly awful - I could get to the higher sidepull with my left about half the time but from there it was time to forget it - you could just feel it sliding off and there was no way you could get the necessary leverage on it for the move up to the jug. Still it will be there another time and I still went home happy - I have finally managed to get a decent sequence to the three pocket problem which means I can semi-static to the third pocket in control now instead of it being an all out slap and I got introduced to a problem that I think is called "The Eyes" (to the left of the problem Trackside). Now this feels like a really nice problem and it will be good to have that to project alongside Strawberries but will require better conditions to get the bottom section wired and the top doesn't look too much of a gimme either. Also starting to get ideas re: Trackside itself and I still have The Ultimate Gritstone Experience to do - bring on the cooler temps - the rad and syke seems to be back!
1 comment:
It might be windy but it is muggy as fuck out there, no wonder.
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