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!

Live from Sheffield

So, I'm safely set up in my new location for the forthcoming 9 months and after surviving over 6 weeks without any climbing (due to a wrist injury) I've been slowly working my way back up to full capacity once again. Well, I was until this weekend at least where temptation eventually won over and started climbing everyday that is :)

The top picture pretty much says it all - my skin is non-existent, and that was before starting off on gritstone. So, a week after the above incident happened and I still haven't recovered - the people who invited me climbing......when are we going again?! to say my motivation is back, is an understatement....

So, in the past week and a half, I've been checking out some of the local areas, both outdoors and indoors (partly to reduce my mileage in the car, and I'll get more out of the indoor wall sometimes). So far, The Roaches (see above photo :), Raven Tor (wow......!!!!!! - a few projects already found but looks like I might be too late in season), Climbing Works (Jeebus, it's frickin' huge! and the system board is eye-opening), the Foundry (great route-setting and almost seems like a better wall for pure training?!?!? probably Moffatt's influence :) and Burbage (again, see above photo for an idea of it's influence).

Initial impressions? There is a serious quantity of people climbing at a very high level here (one guy described himself as a punter by 'only' bouldering Font 7c :) which will be interesting to see whether there's all the elitist issues that go with that or not. But on a way more positive note, there's loads and loads of super-motivated people, and they're all willing to share/introduce/motivate/psyche/travel so it's pretty good so far. Definitely missing some people and some of the fun things from Ireland but there's other things that off-set it too. To top that off, the fingerboard in our house has only got rungs that are one-joint or smaller which gives an idea of potential personal progression or injury while here....hmmmm......trying to avoid it currently but not succeeding (especially after buying my copy of Progression!).


The new local training venue, 10 mins walk from my front door


Gareth showing how it's done on one of those slopery gritstone problems (7a+ or something)