More Proof Positive

Even when I was still at Malham I knew I'd come a bit of a cropper. Cleaning the last two routes simultaneously! rushing to get home in time for Daddy duty I pulled a little too hard on exhausted muscles and tendons and felt something give in my shoulder. The following day my shoulder was throbbing away although luckily not completely seized up. I think its my bicep tendon but will know more in a couple of days. This didn't really come as too much of a surprise as seemingly every time I try hard (particularly training) when rock climbing something snaps. Obviously this could easily put a spanner in the positive thinking speil I psyched myself up with just days before.

Then today I watched the Grand Prix motor racing down in Melbourne and it reminded me why however bad things look you should never give up. For those who didn't see the race; Jenson Button, who after being flagged up as the new British hope of motor racing has spent the best part of his career languishing at the back of the grid having to keep his composure and his dodgy car on the track while being routinely mocked by punters as talentless. Then at the end of last year's season it looked like his team were about to give up F1 all together leaving him with no job. That a hastily salvaged team could actually make the start this season was amazing enough, but for Button to go on and win (and his team mate Barrichello to come second) was pure fairy tale stuff.
An equally impressive story filled third place where Lewis Hamilton last year's champion but this season driving a dog of a car made it from a starting position of 18th onto the podium.

I'm off to the Alps in 2 weeks so I feel a bit like Hamilton 18th on the starting line with a sea of cars between him and the podium. Time to turn on the positive afterburners.

Malham - the power of positive thinking

Steve McClure onsighting another 8a at Malham

For me Malham is easily one of the most impressive cliffs we have, as far as limestone goes its one of the few that compares to the best in France or Spain. But its a place Ive always found tough, somewhere I needed a lot of motivation just to start attempting any of the routes there.

So today deciding to skip a possible trip to Scotland and try and get the rock season off to a start involved a fair bit of positive thinking. Not least that I had a nose dripping like a tap matched only by the teaming rain as Alex and I left Sheffield. We were rewarded surprisingly with an almost bone dry crag to ourselves (until mid afternoon when another team braved the forecast).

For some odd reason I ended up with quickdraws in two parallel routes Against the Grain, a 7a I've done before but which for me would still be a good tick for the first day sports climbing of the year, and Taking the Space, a 7b - a grade I haven't climbed for about a decade. With the clock ticking on our return drive I had a decision to make. I'm hoping to try to carry some of the momentum over from the winter season so using the power of positive thinking I opted for the harder route. It would be nice to report that I floated up it first redpoint but it didn't quite work out like that, but it still felt great to be making forward choices straight away at the beginning of the season. The following whippers blew away a few cobwebs too.

On the same note, as a Dad its easy to come up with excuses why you can't climb as hard as you want to but one of my role models is another Sheffield Dad Steve McClure, who climbed his hardest route the amazing Overshadow 9a+ at Malham while bringing up his 1 year old daughter. For a bit of McClure inspiration check out this excerpt from Alastair Lee's Psyche film of Steve on his other Malham testpiece Rainshadow 9a.

http://www.posingproductions.com/video_podcast.php?form_action=play&video_podcast_id=81