Sunday 22 November 2015

Year out

After having a year out of climbing due to being demotivated and not finding climbing as interesting I'm now back attempting to get back to my old schedule. Enjoying climbing again but finding almost the simplest of things tough has been a real challenge not being able to climb for 2 hours due to my forearms being filled with lactic acid has been very annoying but I'm now back on the beastmaker doing repeaters and everything is slowly but surely returning to normal.

I should hopefully be keeping my blog updated as i return to going outdoors and also the occasional competition.

Duncan


Friday 30 May 2014

Sitting Bull F7C

Here's a short video of me climbing sitting bull in font, I will release an overall Font edit soon.

https://vimeo.com/96681307

Wednesday 28 May 2014

Font February 2014

This would be my 4th trip to font, I was excited and generally felt strong to get some good ticks! I went in a large group of the "boulder central" lot all of us ready for a good trip and everyone feeling strong. The trip didn't start off very well with the weather so bad on the channal we had over nine ours of delays and got to our gite at 4am!

The next day the weather looked great, tired but psyched to go climb! We went to Buthiers as it was the closest and quicly warmed up at the main area next to the car park and headed over to the boulder which partage was on so we could try attention de chef d'ouvre 7A which went within a bit of trying it great problem and quite high for me! For the rest of the day I didn't climb much saving myself for other problems!

Photo: Patrick Cleary
The next day we went again to Buthiers as we all had problems we could get on there, i managed a quickish ascent of attention de chef d'ouvre assis 7B another good line just adding one move to the original problem again i then rested as we were going to sabot for a night session! We arrived at sabot the conditions were great took us a while to find the boulders as it was dark and we were only using floodlights again warming up on some typicall font style 6A's and B's that seemed near impossible! After that i ventured down to try Salle Gosse 7C after getting spat off on my first go i pulled on agaion and felt much better this time arriving at the crux last move i did this over and over until about short while later when the climb went i was suprised when i stuck the sloper i will post video footage of the ascent up soon! Video hopefully posted soon.



Photo: Tash Allcock
The next few days weather was bad with rain for 2/3 days after that we got a great session up at mont pivot where i managed to climb pancras assis F7C after jonny managed to complete it before me, with phsyche high we headed back to the gite to fuel up for a night session at an area just a short way from sabot iI warmed up and got on an 8a i forgot the name but it was solid and i couldnt touch it so i moved on to action direct F7A that i managed to flash. A short while later i look at alae ajacta est ata one move F7c i was no where near and slowly i got closer to this one move to a crimp of a massive undercut finally i latched the hold and managed to top out. It was a great relief to get this problem as every go it felt so close/

Photo: Tash Allcock
The next day or two weren't filled with many sends just trying hard problems overall it was a great font trip id like to thank everyone who went from Boulder Central and for driving me there and also the great company for the whole trip which meant we all came away with a good tick. Moreover like to thank Boulder Central for providing great training facilities, expert knowledge from fitforlifepersonaltraining  and also to Beyond Hope!

Duncan

Thursday 15 May 2014

Rockatrocity and ore...

After 2 recent trips to font which blog post and footage i will post sooni felt strong so i headed for a day at parisellas cave with Jonny Argue to get on rockatrocity F7C again after falling off the last move a lot around the same time last year.

I warmed up doing hangs and then an easy V5 with Jonny repeating several times to get warm, then headed over to rockatrocity and repeated each move easily first go and Jonny helped me refine my beta i had one go and fell off around the middle one quick rest and i found myself matching the last hold! To make things even better wobbly block moves felt ok and went for that falling of second go but again going second go! I however did not manage Hatch life F8A falling of the last move later on in the session!

With thanks to Jonny A, Boulder central team of staff in generall for having a great wall to train at and also Beyond Hope!

Friday 14 February 2014

Font Psyche

Haven't updated in a while because; I have been busy training for font! I go away early tomorrow morning and will be there by tomorrow evening.

The weather looking good, feeling strong just got to hope everything goes well, I will update my blog as soon as I'm home on how I got on!

Monday 9 December 2013

Open Youth 2013

So this weekend was the winter Open Youth event for team selection and the first round of British Bouldering Youth series. I arrived at The Works feeling good, no nerves and felt stronger then I ever had before.

Photo: Peter Fisher
The format was 8 qualifiers and 3 final routes if you qualified for the final. The qualification round went well I thought for my first year in Junior, flashing 5, doing one second go and then getting a bonus on one -- but that slip that caused me to do one 2nd go caught me out like it did to a few other competitors also. Sadly I didn't qualify -- I may have got the bonus, but not flashing that problem just knocked me out of the final 8.  Frustrated, but I knew nothing could be done now and the only thing to do now is to train more for the next round!

Well done to all competitors, and especially to George Morris, Dom Vincent for 1st and 2nd in boys B, and also Tash Allcock for coming 5th in girls A! Thanks to both Boulder Central and their staff and friends for support and also advice and training from Jonny Argue.


Photo Peter Fisher


Monday 2 December 2013

Winter Plans

This weekend I'll be heading to Sheffield for the youth open. I will be doing both the bouldering and leading hoping to do well in both events, will be certainly hard but I'm looking forward to doing my best!

Photo I took early this year, at Stanage
After that will keep up my training to the level I have been doing, but hopefully get the chance to go out on the weekends too tick some hard grades with a bit of luck! Definitely test myself out on the grit, certainly with the Christmas holidays coming close then the will be lots of opportunity for getting out!