Hidden Talent

I don't think I'm that easily impressed but I'm fairly often surprised my the hidden talents of some of my climbing partners. Following my last post mentioning that I'd decided to take up jogging a friend of mine Es Tressider emailed to suggest going out for a run together. Well whilst being a very good climber (third ascent of the Duel IX in Scotland, new mountain routes around the world and alpine things like Scotch on the Rocks) Es is also quite handy at running. In fact when I asked him what he's been up to recently he casually mentioned that earlier this week he'd set a new record on the Snowdon Horseshoe. (read his blog about it here http://www.es-on-ice.co.uk/news/show/75 ).

This comes on top of many great "dashing about feats" most notably setting a new Skye Ridge record. The film crew Hotaches captured a previous attempt here http://hotaches.blogspot.com/2007/05/skye-ridge-podcast.html

So as you can imagine I'm a little nervous about our proposed jog, perhaps I'll send Es round the Edale skyline first and join him for the last couple of miles to the Cafe?

Every A2 pulley has a silver lining

Since Yosemite I've been concentrating on family things and attempting to do a little sports climbing. I've always found sports routes particularly challenging and I guess in the past avoided the humiliation of constantly flailing on everyone elses warm ups. This year having had a fairly intense winter climbing up in Scotland I thought I'd try again as a low stress fun option for the summer. Unfortunately the fun went out the window last week when penultimate move last redpoint of the day on Witches Brew a fairly feisty 7a+ at Kilnsey there was a loud crack from my right hand. Initially I thought I'd broken the hold off immediately followed by the thought oh beep, thats beeped it for the beeping summer. I'm still waiting for a physio appointment but it's obvious Ive well and truely beeped the A2 pulley on my right ring finger. Whether its a bad tear or fully ruptured we'll see but I'll clearly not be climbing for a while.

After a few days of deep sulks, I've decided to try and turn round this "problem" into an opportunity. I used to run alot as a kid, competing for Swindon athletic club as an 11 to 15 year old and occasionally representing Wiltshire. I was never an outstanding athlete but I used to love running and I was left with a really good fitness base. In my early twenties I had a resting pulse of 32. Since then I've probably squandered a lot of that fitness with only very infrequent return dabbles at running. I started again recently to try to loose weight for the Sports climbing. Initially it was purgatory and I could only really manage 20 minute runs. I've had a couple of months now and have built up to hour long runs, so with climbing off the calendar for a few months I've decided to put some proper effort in and try and regain some proper running fitness. I'm even contemplating entering the odd event (it would be daft to call it a race as I'll only be racing myself).

Whilst trawling through the net looking for running advice I came across the following extraordinary link. http://www.bobbysrun.co.uk/ironman.html
It details I guy called Bobby Browns attempt on a Deca-ironman triathlon, yes thats 10 ironmans back to back! Strangely compellingly inspiring.