An ascent...

In the last month or so since I posted Ive been up and down,  I had some dental problems so for a couple of weeks I had been taking a lot of pain pills, lots and lots of pain pills.  When I had the offending teeth ripped out I thought thank fuck for that I can get back to unrestricted beautiful pulling in the mill, 24 hours later my middle two fingers on my right hand were swollen and sore.  FUCK FUCK triple FUCK.  Over the years I have been very lucky with finger injury's only having one minor thing about 5 years ago, but having seen plenty of other people lose months to them I was gripped to say the least.  Fortunately after 3 weeks of minimal climbing icing and squashy balls, with tape I felt I could climb OK as long as it was open handed.


Yesterday CJD was going to the cave, with nothing better to do I phoned James and we went down the coast for a social.  At this point I was planning on Stella in the sun and taking the piss out of Chris and James.  Warming up on left wall I remembered I do enjoy climbing with James as everything is suddenly very very funny.

The three of us climbed there a lot the year Chris did East Coker and I failed to do Clyde so it was nice to be out and about.  James decided to do Lou Ferrino having previously fallen off matching the finishing slot, I decided it would be a good idea to see if I could deal with that before trying anything else.  Getting to the 2 finger pocket feeling good I decided to turn right and head along Greenheart, through the undercuts and feeling fine I missed the jug at the start of Beaver Cleaver, a rest another go confused I fail leaving Lou Ferrino with a foot pop on the shiny slimestone.  Another rest I start to feel nervous, I can clearly do this, it was the first V12 I ever did all the moves on, for about 10 years its been something that could go, for 6 years its been something that should go, for 2 years its something that I dropped the last move on.  So third go up and over straight through bish bosh it was piss, all those circuits in the past and turns out I just need to do 5 move problems in the mill on a 30 board, or maybe its the weights or perhaps the pull ups or could be the running or core.  I guess training really does work and sometimes it all comes together with good skin and decent conditions, or maybe because I had no intention of trying it I couldn't sabotage my attempt.   Regardless first time in the Cave in 7 months and a tick, somethings working.

Some deliciously shit footholds I made for the mill, ah dear mill I will return in a few short weeks.