A little push

The work front has been exceptionally busy of late. With several imminent lectures; Kendal, London, Sheffield and Abergavenny, plus big writing pieces for Climb, Alpinist and the Taxman! my vague training efforts have got even more lax. I've found myself on a few nights looking up from the computer, realising the evening has sailed by and sacking off any grand plans of getting fitter.

But I got a good kick up the posterior yesterday. Andy Kirkpatrick mentioned that some of the Inverness boys had noticed my pull up post and had been training hard. Andy reckoned that Pete MacPherson was doing 270 in half an hour. Which would match Guy but in half the time. Now numbers aren't Andy's strength it could easily be 27 or 2700 but exactly how many isn't that important. What was important was to know that there were others training hard with the hope of big things this winter. I'd also seen in some of Dave MacLeod's recent blog posts http://www.davemacleod.blogspot.com/ that he'd been having to get his training in at around midnight after 12 hours of writing his book.

So last night I had no excuse and was down in my cellar at 10pm. It was incredibly hard work to be honest and I struggled to get through, sometimes yawning, sometimes feeling faint. But with the extra motivation I managed 100 ice axe pullups. For me it's not a competition thing really but more a desire to be part of this wave of enthusiasm. If we actually get any conditions this could be a pretty impressive season. Last year I think about 5 people climbed grade IX (Dave was too busy attempting grade XIIs!), but this season there are at least 20 folk with the potential to get up that grade.