Cold Fusion Blog

With high pressure set over Scotland. I planned a day off work to make a Sat/Mon attempt on my Anvil project. Deadlines at work had been grinding me down so I was looking forward to chilling out in the sun.

Saturday 28th April. With a decent warm-up for once in the sun I felt good on the project. Suspecting I could do the jockey seat link I pulled on and slapped at the quartz edge, swinging I popped off at the last milli-second. I doing so I managed to rip four deep flappers in my little finger as I skidded over the sharp quartz. A bit of finger mummification managed to keep the gory bits in place for another go. I couldn’t bear the pain of more dogging and ripping my finger again so decided to start redpointing. This I found more settling, break the three year cycle of dogging and making some progress. On redpoint I managed to catch the sloper twice, once lifting my foot. On my final go I felt good. Lifted my foot and slapped at the crux hold. Funny that Dave read my body language. In that second before I slapped the hold negativity crept into my mind. Thoughts of pain and failure from previous efforts. Its weird how a place and position can hold such a strong association and how fast this can alter mood. Dave suggested that that it was down to expectations. If we find ourself exceeding those expectations then we can become lost. This is why I prefer to back link my routes to reinforce positive engrams with each movement. I hope I wont fall into this trap again.

Sunday 30th April. With another outstanding forecast I was really keen to improve on Saturdays effort. First I tried a back link from the crux to the top. After holding the crux swing I continued but fell off the top crux, showing how hard the route might actually be. Spent some time on this move and sussed out a better way to hold the crimp with a thumb wrap, leading to a more controlled swing. Managed 7 redpoints in total today, 2 failed, 4 got crimp, 1 slapped hold - but couldn’t hold final arch of swing - very, very close! Temperature starting to become an issue. Weekday traffic meant a really late start and didn’t start redpointing until 4pm in the sun. Will try and make an early start for the coming weekend.

Dave seemed to be suffering on his project too. Having made good progress early in the month he was now fighting to gain the same high point. The full tactical assault was on using various sequences, speed and psyche to adopt a winning method. Given this much effort I’m sure the route with yeild soon.

This entry was posted on Monday, April 30th, 2007 at 12:35 am and is filed under Sport. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can skip to the end and leave a response. Pinging is currently not allowed.