quarry

another supposed write off day turned out quite productive. joined dec and jim in the quarry and armed with a specific wire headed up tenashity. found crux fine in the end but came close to bailing above on an innocuous step up due to general weakness and fatigue. afterwards followed duncan up frenzy which i've already ruined my onsight chance on unfortunately cos its good gear and moves. finally got round to doing thrust and it was very good, i ran out certain sections cos gear placing stamina was at a premium, nice big climb.

bets bouldering in the country

went up three rock with jjames, twas very nice, managed high traverse first time, also campus move. go figure. met some fellow tom from ucd, one of only a handful of times seeing anyone else up there climbing. want to work pointlessly on one arming the dyno again. pointing finger on right hand has had swollen knuckle joint for three weeks. great timing.

i'll bite.

here's my theory of the two rats, i just made it up.

i think there are two rats to be fed. one rat is the actual "movement on rock" rat, the purist. it is easily satisfied when it has been starved, hence a short punterish potter in bullock leaving me all lyrically waxing up in here. however for me it is rarely starved and the fact that it's so easily satisfied means without other motivation it is quickly numbed. two return trips to bullock this week would inevitably bore me.

the other rat is the "challenge" rat. without a sense of progression and challenge i would not have any motivation to go back again and again to the same places, which one realistically has to do.

very rarely do they operate independently, last night it was all about the purist rat, some wet bored shitty nights in the coop it could only ever be about improvement, but generally they act in symbiosis.

grade whoring is when the challenge rat has gone deviant. my rats are healthy.

i'm calling ped's clause on this post which entitles me to come back and change/burn it as i see fit.

bullock

the lads went for a swim in bullock so i popped down too late to watch and pottered on the rock instead. felt like i'd not climbed in an age, bullocks like 3 rock, they really are brilliant when you catch them right. tonight it was sun setting, perfect friction, plonking around on my own on 5s and deepwater diffs. felt like i'd again found something that perhaps has been missing from bouldering for me recently, getting lost in that seasonal rush up through the grades climbing the same problems as each previous year. this felt like a different thing, brief but worth remembering.

grit

got up to tor mountain over the weekend. some fantastic grit, better than i was expecting. unfortunately we got rained off but still got to play on a lovely training wall of grit, nice height, landing and spread of holds. lovely big boulder below it went untested due to the rain but it looke d great, only issue perhaps slopey landing. still need to get to navar and back up to cuilcagh. you could drive it in two hours