Monday, March 16, 2009

a series of fortunate and unfortunate events

The last week was spent trying silly moves on projects outdoors, a move which i've stuck 4 times now, but unfortunately its followed by a rather spicy boulder problem. Ned is super close to said spicy boulder too, so that's our main focus at the moment. For me its like a stop cap on spring. I want to get it done so i can try all the other things i want to try. That and the fact i'm overlaying all my training at the moment with specific training for easter means that i am catching my body out quite a bit. Which makes things a bit ouchy...

BUCS (the national uni comp) was a good laugh, and the comp wall was really well set. Ned was kicking my arse, which took the pressure off me so i relaxed and stopped over gripping everything. Ned then fell alseep on the roof problem whilst cruising it, conveniently placing me into the lead, but we hadn't worked this out (as score cards were arbitrary at this point) so i was still pretty chilled. Ned then dropped the last move of the hardest problem in true English style. the wide pinch on this was shutting me down so i nipped over to try the power problem up the 50 which was actually getting me psyched as i got to pull hard. after fumbling the flash i then managed to hack out a sequence to the finish. I'm pretty sure all the other Uni's hate us now after winning the team comp for 3 years in a row. But hey ho, like i said if anyone needs anymore persuading that our fingerboards work then check the BUCS results. That'll probably be my last comp for the forseeable future so it was nice of Ned to let me win (there really was bugger all between us) Rae also came in 3rd in the ridiculously tight women's event (3 points for 3 places)

For anyone there competing on a sports bursary you'll be glad to know that we recieve absolutely NO support off Sheffield University, Ned gets shouted at when he has to leave to compete in world cups and we can't even get into the Uni wall for free. Cheers Sheffield! its amazing city to climb in and a really active scene but the Uni is being farely falsely represented as one that cares about sport, quite clearly it doesn't. Which goes head on with my belief that we are educated to become intellectual geniuses but physical retards (watch this to hear Ken Robinson's opinion) leaving people to develop their bodies in their own time.
As far as i am aware Newcastle, Durham, Loughborough, Nottingham and Bangor all seem to be the places to go if you want to progress physically as well as academically.

Or you could just whack a beastmaker up in your doorframe in first year and dangle like there's no tomorrow. Then build a board in your room in second year and train on that 4 times a week. but for that you need an abnormal level of psyche.

A big shout out to The Works for hosting a really fun comp, its a pretty good bastion of what bouldering is all about, both indoors and out.

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1 Comments:

Blogger James Abley said...

I'm pretty sure that when I was there, Rich Bingham and Dan French (and possibly Airlie?) were getting some kind of support from the University. Not sure whether that was cash, access to facilities or just the nice branded training tops. You want to have a word with the people at Goodwin; get your photos up on the wall!

March 17, 2009 at 4:04 PM  

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