Since the recent thaw has hit Scotland, I have had the chance to do some well needed work to restock the bank balance and also get some good training sessions in over the past week.
On Wednesday Mike Tweedley and I headed up to the Cairngorms, planning on getting some winter action in Coire an Lochain. But as the wind was gusting 85mph and the temperature was +3’c, we decided to give it a miss and head to Newtyle Quarry near Dunkeld for a beast of a training session in the tube cave.
After this I had two days working on the farm, which to me is just like doing two full days of training! I love working on the farm, as the labouring work that is involved can be so hard that your body is totally drained when you get home. This is usually after moving 400 tyres off the silage pit or chopping logs all day, I find it a brilliant way to train for long hard days on the hill.
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| Me doing laps on Fast and Furious (3/4 hight) Photo credited to Peter Boswell |
Yesterday I had another good training session, but this time it was at Ratho. This involved trying some of the new routes that have recently been set on the new competition wall. I’m hoping that training on the steep ground will get me fit for some of the routes I intend to try later this season!
Even though I was feeling pretty spent from yarding my way along the steep roofs at Ratho all day yesterday, I was still psyched to get another session in today. So this time it was back to the steep cave at Newtyle Quarry with Lindsey Yule and my Dad (who was armed with his camera), for some more laps on Fast and Furious. Unfortunately one of the holds 3/4 of the way up the route blew on my first go, this made the route nearly impossible to do fully. So I ended up lapping the first 3/4 of the route as many times as I could in the day. This proved to be very pumpy and I’m sure that all this recent training will pay off very soon.
I’m heading back up to Newtyle Quarry tomorrow with Mike Tweedley armed with the implements to repair the route, and to have one last training session before the forecast weather brings the mountain routes back into condition and the winter sendage hopefully continues.
