Cold Fusion Blog

After two weeks my man flu has finally receded enough to do some training. However, lying in bed on Thursday after a long day at work training seemed as unlikely to happen as on Monday, Tuesday or Wednesday evening. Desire to improve on last weekends poor effort on Voodoo finally kicked me into action for a session. I learnt the next day from the cramp in my arms that a poor warm up before my second go was to blame.

Surprisingly after so much rest warming up wasn’t so bad and likewise in dispatching some easier problems from my circuit. I was glad not to have lost ground after a week of bad diet (the flu’s no excuse) and no exercise. On the campus board a small amount of progress was even made, shoulders holding together long enough in the cold to tick a good set of 1-4-6’s and 2-4-7’s. As good as these felt, a couple of poor attempts at 1-4-7 brought me back down again. Dead hangs and one armers were also poor, explaining why I couldn’t tie the full movement together yet. On the plus side endurance seemed good after I managed 2×4 laps on the wall. Arms felt weird, although tight they didn’t feel pumped, just progressively tired. This is something that can only be good for the next Siurana trip week after next.

Standing in the darkness I felt a little sad looking at the seven year gap in my old training log. Something that has been neglected but not forgotten in my intervening academic years. Although the focus of my problem solving interests tend to drift, I feel like its back on hard climbing again.

Its been six years since I’ve trained regularly on my campus board. A combination of factors such as too little time, motivation, good weather and winter light has meant I’ve never really rekindled my old form. On Saturday I finally decided to do something about it and set up some external lights for the campus board. For as little as £11.70 and an hours work I can now use my campus board through the winter months. The results were staggering, but sadly my performance was poor.

Campus boarding outside at 10pm in late October.

My week off after Suirana, liberal diet and poor exercise left me feeling very fat in the ass. After warming up I struggled up 2-4-5 and took several goes to manage single 1-4-6’s and 2-4-7’s. My shoulders ached instantly requiring constant massage to keep cramp at bay. Performing set’s of 1-4-7’s as scribbled in my old log seem a long way away, however I’m sure I can reach this level again within the next couple of months. Surely an advantage of being so weak is that improvement is guaranteed. To map my progress I’ve created a new campus board log.