Wall

Yesterday I met up with K at Crawley. It was the first climbing session for about three weeks where I felt I made any progress, though I don't think I'm back where I was 4 weeks ago yet. It's a bit hard to judge because I became even more aware of being scared of coming off when I would swing. This fear exacerbates my weight being too far out and restricts movement so I find it hard to assess how I would be without it.

Had the usual discovery, several times, that moves that looked hard being in fact very easy once I actually made them.

Towards the end I decided I'd like to work on a 5 that went the full height of the wall. I picked one on the main, middle section, where most of the routes are harder, and which overhangs, so that I could also work on the fear of swinging thing. There was another pair just to our right whose route would be amongst mine about half way up, and at that level there was also a clip (the routes there are mainly used for leading). Kevin talked about how the clip would be a problem but I was sure I wouldn't get that far up anyway. As it turned out, I would have- the route went well, felt challenging but good - and by then I'd got not idea how to deal with it and felt awkward about being in their way. This was just an excuse because they were still both on the ground. But my mind was expecting to go down before then so I did. Even so I'm chuffed with the effort. I decided to make that a bit of a project now. I also got up a 5+ and two other 5s but they were shorter. K did very well indeed and got up a 6b, with a huge effort (it also was shorter).