we came, we saw, we climbed - Fontainebleau

the beauty of Font problems. Learning how to move off holds like the one above. Sorry, forgotten name of climber

The title describes it best. I'm just back from a week in Font. Short descriptions will suffice for it all:
- social: (lots of Irish and loads of my new Sheffield gang around). Awesome! The photo below shows about a third of the group.

- positive: I got the all-clear from the physio only the week before about my wrist (which I alluded to here and have had since Indian Creek, early June). Didn't need any ibuprofen as recommended by the physio too, sweeeeeet :)
- pysche!: watching some of the Sheffield gritstone climbers hang off things that I didn't even realize were holds (see top-most photo as a mild example). Took me over an hour to do the same problem, some of these guys were doing it as a warm-up. Lesson learned? I can hang off the smallest edge, but have a lot to learn with slopers.
- circuits: related to the wrist. I was told to start slow, so multiple easier problems seemed the order of the day. The Font circuits were ideal and the perfect intro. 30+ problems per day seemed like an ideal intro for the first few days. Thanks to Judith for that one.
- chatting: sitting down every evening and chatting about random life with a bunch of close friends. Especially thanks to Dave, Caroline, Judith and Tim for that one in our gite!

And finally, did I mention The Mighty Boosh? Dave, I'll leave you to elaborate on that one ;)

Bodes well for the winter months now too. Dave is showing tons of motivation for a winter of bouldering so that we can transfer it all onto routes next Spring. Bring on the punishing training schedule for the forthcoming months! Psyche!


The beauty of Font: learning to stand, and move, between holds when it's all down to the subtleties of movement and friction

Climbing going more mainstream in Ireland

as seen in Irish Times last weekend........they're under the Gadget category :) What does that say? And yes, just a boring random post for a Friday morning.
Have a great day y'all :)

Great happy movie - positive vibes everybody!

Just sit through the first part, it's not what you think :) But it is a brilliant idea....



Thanks to my buddy, John Bourne, on Facebook for this one......

National Lead Climbing comp

Probably a bit late for it now (it was broadcast live but I was going climbing myself so forgot to publish it here - oops :) but you can watch the playback of the comp below - just select 'on demand' and you'll have a selection of clips.

Congrats to the organisers, PlayAtHeight and the MCI for putting in the effort, sounds like it was a great event!

A new era in online movies and how to retrieve them

BigUpProductions have put their new movie, Progression, up for sale last weekend. It's $29.95 for the DVD (excluding postage, but you do get extras and subscription to Climbing Magazine for USA citizens).
But, and here's the really neat part, it's also available for download in high definition.
And it's only $19.95.
Which is currently only €12 cause the US dollar sucks against the Euro right now.
So why haven't you bought it yet?

Some caveats, you don't get the Extras (fine with me) or the subscription (which wouldn't have worked for me here in Europe anyway). It's about 2GB in size so make sure you've got a good internet connection.

Finally, in a hugely brave step, the movie is being supplied without any security or copying restrictions so you'll never have hassles copying it from home computers to your laptop for your next road-trip for motivation. Be nice, and all buy a copy of it - don't give a copy to all your friends without question (although use common sense - if your friends in your house want to watch it, treat it like a normal DVD and share it!). A lot of people may acquire their music through alternative means (even if there is free ways to source music), but support the sport that you love and the people promoting it.
It's not expensive and for the amount of work that must have gone into it, it deserves the payback.

And of course, is it any good? Pretty eye-opening of what is possible and the future evolution of climbing. The intro sequence of (who else) Sharma on his new short 9a+ in Spain is outrageous (put it up there with his other classic footage in other movies - Just Do It, Rampage, etc.) and the footage of Patxi UBabcdefghijkl (I'm not even going to try and spell it :) is insane. 2500 holds when he's training, and much of it with a 20 pound weight belt on. Every day. I'm sooo inspired just thinking about that.

I haven't watched it fully yet so stay tuned for a full review.

National Lead Climbing Competition - make the trip!

I've already posted about this on IrishClimbingCoaching, and there's loads of mentions of it on the climbing.ie forums so thought I'd give one final plug for the event. Hopefully as many of you as possible will be down to support the event, it's the first of it's kind in a long while and will only become a regular event if we can all support it. I can only imagine that there's a lot work involved to run an event like this, and with international route-setters being brought in, not cheap either!

Having said that, I won't be there myself due to work commitments not making it possible to make a flight home at a reasonable hour - not that I genuinely wasn't interested in going along to compete and support the event. But if you're in the country, hopefully you can make it down. I know for me, I'd be very inspired to take part in a leading comp over a bouldering comp!

For anyone nervous of a comp, don't worry about it - it'll all just be a bit of fun and a good experience for all - I would be more than willing to guess that everyone else will be in the same boat. And from hearing reports that two Irish climbers took part in the European championships in Ratho a few weeks ago (see the current BMC magazine for a photo of Eddie), I'd say that's more nerve-racking than a fun comp back home!

I'll look forward to hearing some great reports after the event!