Creative writing (a.k.a. a Christmas mash up)

Lara in reflective mood.

Inspired by Kelly Cordes - who regular readers will know if one of my climbing heroes - I thought I'd get creative for my last blog post before Christmas. So following is my very own 

Raddaddiary Christmas Mash-UpTM.  Every sentence has been lifted from my blog musings over the last year and a half, scrambled, reordered and stuck together.  Thank the Lord for Ctrl/C - Ctrl/V. This may make no sense, some sense, or more sense than my usual ramblings.  It even includes a sex scene (sort of).  Enjoy, and Merry Christmas 2012...

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I have always thought that blogging is only for the sort of people who have something interesting to say. I was never quite sure what this meant, although it didn't stop me form nodding sagely.  This morning I was nearly run over by a small one-legged boy. I suffered a spiral fracture of the lower left Tibia and Fibula. I wasn’t, for once, daydreaming.

I've generally gone through life without worrying too much about things. Fortunately sitting around feeling sorry for myself isn't really an option. It has been said that at each end of the socio-economic spectrum there is a leisure class: one cash-rich but time-poor, and the other time-rich but cash-poor.  I was an 18 year old student at the University of Bristol; my daily routine involved a lot of sitting on the sofa, leg propped up on a pile of cushions. I spent a fair amount of money, I ate a lot and drank a lot more. Leaving the flat seemed like a hassle, so I didn’t bother. I played second trumpet - something sufficient to merit a decent story and befitting my (imagined) status as a (wannabe) badass. I wanted to be a Ski instructor. My mum was convinced I would be a civil engineer. I definitely didn’t want to be a shepherd. 

I know people look on sympathetically at the time it takes me to do anything.  I did not meet the love of my life until I was almost thirty. We were generally smelly, tired, and looking forward to a weekend of relative luxury. When Anita and I got married she really didn't like the smell, whilst I had got used to it (a sort of comforting dribbly-pillow odour) . I bounced her on my knee, I rubbed my face against her fuzzy bald head and I inhaled the smell of her soft baby skin. In general I would like to think that I added to, rather than detracted from the entertainment; my friend Tom's trousers ended up hanging from a chandelier. That made me feel pretty good about myself, I have to admit. I got home, sat on the sofa and pondered the 42 days of daytime television, tea and chocolate digestives. I thought about that a lot over the course of the following year. I don’t think I have ever recovered from those initial weeks and months. 

For a long time I was as guilty as anyone of not making the time for the things that really mattered to me.   I've taken a pay cut, changed my job and joined the growing ranks of the part-time employed.  I have less money but far more time. Before I get too excited I should remind myself: it could have been so different. Crawling around on a blue and orange patterned seventies carpet in an open plan living room; looking longingly at brightly coloured GoreTex jackets; I'm having more fun than I thought possible. I don’t remember much of the next three hours, other than feeling like my eyeballs had gone outside of my head. I briefly wondered how long I could lie there for - I was in such a state it emerged as more of a strangled squeal of relief - what my friend Ted would call an "involuntary oral emission". I put it in my mouth, and licked and sucked my finger until it was clean. I felt, in my own insignificant way, like a bit of a hero. Fast forward a few hours and between the four of us we had consumed an enormous omelette. The rest, as they say, is gravy.

In July I stopped drinking alcohol. I could derive sufficient energy needs to survive from a diet consisting entirely of pickled onion Monster Munch. Plenty of water, no alcohol, no caffeine. Nowadays my tipple of choice is a small cappuccino, nice and foamy, half a sugar.  I am essentially out of my mash on codeine most of the time. I can only hope I never get addicted to heroin. I am a bad son and I'm really sorry. 

As I write this Lara is sleeping soundly next door. For three and a half weeks I have worn nothing more than shorts, a t-shirt and flip flops. Today, a flowery trousers and top, and a cardigan knitted by Granny Eddy.  I feel it is time to move on with my life. I get the impression that things may soon turn brutal.  But I can take it. I don’t know precisely what this will involve, beyond a certain amount of discomfort, tiredness, and probably some bad weather.  A bit of mystery in life is a good thing as far as I am concerned. What I suppose I am really struggling with is the feeling that I won’t be valued.  As Helen Keller said, life is a daring adventure, or nothing.  

I am overwhelmed by feelings of pride for my wife. 

I think I might cry. Seriously.

In short, life is good. 

In short, I blame it all on Lara.

Life is precious

Life is precious. I know this.  Every night before I go to bed I creep into Lara's room, just to watch her sleeping (usually face down with her bum in the air - it looks neither comfortable nor ladylike but it seems to work for her).  I often hold my breath just so I can hear her breathing.  Sometimes I think I could sit all night just watching. 

I've generally gone through life without worrying too much about things.  I tell myself: if you focus on the potholes in the road you'll miss the scenery.  But really, I don't know if not worrying is a good thing or a bad thing.  I don't even worry that much about Lara - I have somehow convinced myself that she'll always be ok. Maybe I should worry more. Maybe I will, as she starts to find her own way through life and inevitably loses her blissful toddler innocence.  

I hope that Lara outlives me.  Yesterday I received an email from my mum telling me that her cousin Pamela's daughter, Emma, had been killed in a road accident. I'm told that I met Pamela and Emma at a distant relative's wedding anniversary party at some point in the 1990s. I must have been in my early teens.  I vaguely recall the occasion but I don't remember meeting Emma herself - in my mum's words "pretty, with blonde curly hair".  She was just 36 when she died.

By chance this morning I read a post on Kevin Landolt's blog. I don't know who Kevin Landolt is, except that he lives in the USA, he is a rock and ice climber, and he is slowly dying of leukaemia.  This is what Kevin wrote:

Things can always get worse. There really is no bottom to the depths of suffering, but I have learned that through it all we somehow find within ourselves the courage, strength, and humor needed to carry on. We can dig so deep, and then deeper still when facing our personal tragedies, and we have the ability to view those tragedies as opportunities to grow as individuals. 

A slow death is calling me and I know she’ll be a welcome relief when she arrives - whether that be in this hospital bed or years from now in the mountains where I have searched for and found dazzling smears of ice that appear for a number of hours on the flanks of granite walls and then disappear in a matter of minutes beneath a fierce western sun. I hope it’s the latter.

Life is precious.

You've got to make time to take time.

Drinking a beer and stroking a cat. An excellent use of time.
Gary Peterson's place, New Zealand. 

When I was a rower at university in Bristol we would periodically make the trek up the M4 to Reading, for a session of specialist coaching with Rob Morgan. Rob was the head rowing coach for Reading University and considered by us to be something of a guru.  Not to take anything away from Rob, but we hadn't set our coaching standards very high - at that time, self styled "west country bandits" that we were, we didn't have a coach of our own.  Some referred to this approach as 'self-coaching'.  In retrospect it could have been more accurately called 'being rubbish'.  

Anyway, I digress. It is the winter of 1998, it's cold on the upper Thames, and it is inevitably raining.  We are all sleeping on the floor of Reading University's (unheated) boathouse, a privilege for which I think we actually paid cash. And all this so we could hear Rob's words of wisdom.    Rob talked a lot.  In fairness, he knew a lot about rowing, and he was an enthusiastic communicator.  Most of what he said made sense, but some things were so opaque - so cryptic - that they remained a complete mystery.  There were two phrases in particular that stuck with us, and we would spend hours repeating them to each other in the minibus home, trying to mimic Rob's style, tone, and general sense of guru-ness.  (All I can say is that Reading to Bristol on the M4 can be a long and boring journey).  

The first was easy: "You've got to save your beans for when you're giving it beans!".  I think I figured this one out pretty well.  Essentially what Rob was saying was that you needed to conserve energy for when you'd need it most.  Don't go full guns on the warm-up and leave yourself knackered for the actual race.  At least that was my excuse for never pulling too hard on the way to the start (this explains why our warm-ups were often terrible - for which I would like to hereby apologise publicly to my former crew-mates). 

The second was a little more cryptic: "You've got to make time to take time".  I was never quite sure what this meant, although it didn't stop me form nodding sagely whenever it was uttered by guru Rob.  I think the general point was: don't rush.  The rowing stroke has two distinct phases: the drive, and the recovery.  The drive is when the oar is in the water, you are pushing with your legs and applying maximum force to accelerate the boat forward.  The recovery is when you've finished the drive phase and are travelling back up the slide to start the next stroke.  Taking one's time over the recovery is vital. Whizz up the slide too fast and you have to suddenly decelerate; the combined 700+kg of rower weight in an eight man crew acts as a massive brake against the forward momentum of the boat.  

So why am I talking about the technicalities of the rowing stroke?  Well Rob's words came back to me today at work when I was reading a book about being a better lawyer.  I am starting a project to look at how we can more effectively manage large disputes and I thought a good place to start might be to read everything I could on the subject - management, project management, leadership, whatever.  This particular book was closer to the 'self help' end of the scale than the 'academic' end, which meant that like most self-help books it was terribly written but quick and easy to read. (To quote one critic of this blog, "Samuel Pepys it is not"). But it also contained a few really useful ideas.  And one that struck me was the need to make time in your day for the things that are important to you.

The one thing we always complain about not having enough of (besides money) is time.  This particular book advised making time for leisure; for reading; for meditation; or for simply sitting and thinking.  It also pointed out that whilst most people would respond "but I don't have the time", they need to realise that there will only ever be 24 hours in a day. And that if the day were 30 hours long they would still probably want 40. As Rob Morgan might say, such people need to make the time to take the time. 

For a long time I was as guilty as anyone of not making the time for the things that really mattered to me. And I see it in others.  The other day Anita described her Wednesday night 7pm ballet class to me. It usually involves a full speed cycle up the road at 6.59 followed by a mad dash into the studio and a breathless start to the class.  Anita herself admitted that its usually a bit stressful.  And this is meant to be leisure time!  The reason for the hurry? A failure to leave work in sufficient time.

These days, I am making a conscious effort to prioritise my time towards those things that are really important. To read (I reckon if you don't read you'll never learn), to write this blog, to enjoy a post-lunch espresso at a quality coffee emporium, to sit and watch Lara play in the evenings before her bedtime.  There's always the time to do the things that matter to us.  After all, each day will always have the same number of hours - wishing for more time is a waste of time (literally).  Its just a question of prioritising.  Leaving work five minutes earlier to make that journey to ballet less frantic.  Saying "no" to something at work because I want to spend half an hour a day reading around my subject matter.  Deliberately leaving one weekend a month commitment-free just so we can wake up and spend a delicious few moments in bed wondering what to do with the day (everything or nothing - imagine that!).  Making the time to just take time. Maybe Rob Morgan really was a guru after all! 
  

Breaking down.

Its all training: another attempt on "Barn Wall Traverse" (F7a?), Hay-on-Wye. 

When Anita decided to run the London Marathon earlier this year she sought advice from one of her old school friends, herself an enthusiastic (and successful) runner. The advice was essentially this: doing the running is the easy part. The challenge is staying injury-free during the training.  Wise words indeed.

This year I've been trying to heed that advice.  Now I am working less, I can commit more time to training.  A lack of training time is no longer the problem. On the contrary my problem now is the risk of training too much.   It sounds obvious - but I have to keep reminding myself - that I'm not as young as I used to be.  At the ripe age of 35 I don't feel particularly old (although someone at work complimented me on my 'salt n pepper' beard the other day).  But I have noticed that I don't recover as well - or as quickly - as I used to.  When I was an 18 year old student at the University of Bristol I trained with the boat club six days a week (and twice on Tuesdays and Thursdays).  I would punish myself in the weights room, on the rowing machine and out on the water day in day out and still managed to study a fair few hours a day for my law degree and fit in the requisite amount of student socialising.  Looking back I remember feeling tired in the evenings (sometimes too tired to go clubbing on a wednesday night - shock!) but I managed to go three years without any serious training injuries or long term illness.  When I look back on that time it seems like I was invincible. (I also consumed two bowls of sugar puffs and a full english breakfast every day for a year without putting any weight on - those were the days). 

Fifteen years on things are very different and I am slowly learning to adapt.  I have had on and off elbow tendonitis niggles for a couple of years, as well as a few minor finger tendon injuries.  I've realised that if I do a hard session at the indoor wall I need to rest for 48 hours - two sessions on consecutive days leaves me nursing sore elbows for days afterwards. I can generally only manage three climbing sessions a week, sometimes only two if they are particularly hard sessions.  I need to stretch - a lot - and I need to work my antagonistic muscles (the 'push' muscles that are typically overlooked during a hard session 'pulling' on the climbing wall) at least twice a week.  Add in my on-going leg strengthening exercises, a couple of 5k runs each week and half an hour on the bike twice a day for my commute to work, and it adds up to more training time than I perhaps realise.

I've had a mixed climbing year in 2012 - I think Ive managed only around twenty days on rock in the whole year, mainly as a result of the terrible UK weather.  I've trained quite hard though, and spent probably somewhere close to 300 hours in indoor climbing walls since January.  About a month ago it finally started to catch up with me and now I feel like my body is breaking down.  An irritating cough in late September refused to shift and finally developed into a full-on weekend of flu (the proper pounding-head-shivering-uncontrollably-joints-on-fire kind, rather than the wimpy sniffling man-flu sort) at the end of October.  Annoyingly this coincided with a weekend break to Valencia, including two days' climbing on Costa Blanca limestone. I managed only three relatively easy pitches, including one on which I had to rest halfway whilst my shivers subsided - even though it was 28 degrees at the time.

My GP now tells me I have a chest infection and has put me on antibiotics.  I feel permanently out of breath and am going for a chest x-ray in a few days' time (my history with Dickensian chest infections isn't a good one).  I'm taking it as easy as I can - 9 hours a night in bed, plenty of rest - but even taking Lara for a 45 minute stroll around the park leaves me feeling wasted.   Not being able to exercise is a thoroughly frustrating experience.  

Fortunately sitting around feeling sorry for myself isn't really an option. Today Lara and I have had breakfast; been to the park; had coffee and second breakfast in a cafe; bought some bananas (real); been on a shopping trip (imaginary); done some colouring; read some books; and had a cup of tea.  And its only 11.30am.   On reflection maybe its not the climbing training that's doing me in.

Inspiration

LEGEND.

(pic courtesy of Nike / oscarpistorius.com)

I've been thinking a lot recently about climbing performance.  Specifically, just how far I could push my level if I really applied myself.  I've been experimenting with structured training plans and working on my weaknesses. I've taken the time to stretch properly and am looking after my body a bit more. In July I stopped drinking alcohol and have lost eleven pounds of body fat in the eight weeks since (aside from all the other advantages - but that's another blog post).  But I've come to realise that the final ingredient is not physical, it's mental.  Its all about how hard I am prepared to try.  

Thankfully there's been a fair amount of inspiration this year - what a summer of sport it has been.  When the Olympics finished in mid-August, I didn't think it could get any better. I was just grateful I was on holiday in Spain when it came to an end - being out in the sun climbing every day with Lara and Anita certainly helped deflect my sense of loss.  But then we came back to London and the paralympics kicked off.  Wow.  As Channel 4 said: "Thanks for the warm-up". I think the Channel 4 coverage of the Paralympics has been brilliant.  In fact, it was a Channel 4 advert for wheelchair rugby (aka 'murder-ball') that really got my attention - two minutes of slow-motion high-impact crashes between people in wheelchairs, followed by various players listing their injuries from playing the sport (broken hands, fractured wrists, cracked ribs and one player who broke his jaw and fractured his eye socket during the course of a game).  It ends with Kylie Grimes, the only female player on the otherwise all-male GB team saying "how bad can it really get? I've already broken my back."  From that moment on Anita and I were transfixed.

To be clear: I was blown away by some of the achievements on display at the Olympics. Mo Farah running the final 400m of his 10,000m race in 57 seconds (my personal best for a single 400m lap is somewhere north of 1 minute 20), or watching the women's cycling pursuit team breaking their own world record in their heat, and then again in the semi-final, and then AGAIN in the final.  But seeing a Chinese Swimmer with no arms winning a gold medal in the backstroke (defeating several swimmers with at least one arm and a couple with two); a kenyan man with one leg jumping 1.85m in the high jump, or a team of blind football players winning a penalty shoot-out against a non-blind goalkeeper (something Ashley Cole and the rest of the England football team have yet to master) was just mind blowing.  Watching wheelchair basketball last friday at the North Greenwich Arena left me open mouthed at the way in which the players moved the ball from one end of the court to another - marking, passing, dribbling and shooting all whilst piloting wheelchairs at full speed. 

The biggest revelation for me was realising that the paralympics is not about disabled people being allowed to take part in sport - this is sport at an elite level, a level 99.9% of the able-bodied population (myself included) will never get close to.  Ellie Simmonds, who is a dwarf, can swim 100m freestyle in less than the time it take for me to swim half that distance.  Johnny Peacock, a track sprinter with one prosthetic leg, holds the 100m record at 10.8 seconds. He's probably the fourth quickest sprinter (able bodied or disabled) in Great Britain.  David Weir has entered the London wheelchair marathon five times.  He managed fourth once, despite suffering two punctures - every other time he's come first.  At the London Paralympics he won gold medals - destroying all comers - in the 800m, 1500m, 5000m and marathon.  His strength, athleticism and sheer determination are staggering. 

Finally, what to say about Oscar Pistorius? Tonight Anita declared that she is in love with him (I quote: "he makes prosthetic legs look sexy"). I think I may even have a bit of a man crush.  Born with only one of the two main bones in each of his lower legs, his parents were told a few days after his birth that he must have both legs amputated below the knee. Despite this, he excelled at every sport he tried - swimming, rugby, tennis, athletics.  At 15 he ran the 100m at a school sports day. His dad later realised that his time was over half a second faster than the then world record for double amputees.  He went on to win almost everything he entered at multiple Paralympics, including the 100m, 200m, 400m, 4x100m relay at Athens and Beijing.  When he was beaten in the 200m in London it was the first time he has lost a race in nine years (he went on to win the 400m and 4x100m relay).  He's even made the final of the 4x100m relay at the London Olympics, beating a number of 'regular' athletes in the process.  

The efforts of the able-bodied athletes at the olympics at times left me speechless. But some of the feats achieved at the Paralympics made me shout at the television in astonishment.  Blind long-jumpers, sprinters and football players, one-legged table tennis players and high jumpers on crutches, swimmers who swim 50m in under 30s despite starting form a sitting dive because they have no legs.  Don't tell me that David Weir, Ellie Simmonds, Johnny Peacock or any of these athletes are disabled.  They have more ability than I ever will.  It makes me want to go to the gym, to the climbing wall, to put my trainers on and start running - just to see what I am capable of.  As Oscar Pistorius says: "our disabilities do not make us disabled.  Our abilities make us able."  True inspiration.

Hoy mission accomplished

A classic, right there.

This weekend, with my friend Dave, I climbed the Old Man of Hoy.  Situated off the coast of the Orkney Islands, themselves off the far north coast of Scotland, it is one of the UK's most famous and iconic rock climbs.  First climbed in the late 1960s by a team led by Chris Bonnington (an ascent which was broadcast live on the BBC) it offers 137m of adventurous climbing over five pitches up a sandstone sea stack in a wild and exposed setting.  Traditional British climbing at its very best.

Dave and I have been trying to work out when we first came up with the idea of climbing the Old Man of Hoy.  I know it was something I've wanted to do for a while, but always dismissed as too difficult, too far away, or maybe just too improbable.  But earlier this year we dared to think it was possible, and put a weekend aside in the diary.  All we needed was a decent weather window, but as the summer developed into one of the wettest on record, that seemed increasingly unlikely.  Through July and August we browsed guidebooks and searched the internet, researching the climb for tips on success.  Pitch 2 would be the crux - an overhanging off-width crack, too wide for fist jams, not quite wide enough to get your whole body inside.  The sort of crack that requires a peculiarly English climbing technique which you could call "full body climbing" but is usually referred to as thrutching. Right up Dave's street, I thought.  Thankfully he agreed early on to lead the crux pitch, which meant I got to climb the other main feature of the climb - an exposed corner pitch right at the top of the stack. 

Only as the weekend drew closer did we realise that the climbing itself might well be the least of our difficulties.  In fact, we realised that the crux of the climb would just be leaving home in the first place.  Here's what we learned:

1. There's always an emotional cost

Somehow, through nothing more complicated than utter incompetence on my part, I managed to schedule the climb for the same weekend as my niece Lucy's second birthday party.  I'm not quite sure how I thought this particular clash would rectify itself, I suppose deep down I always assumed we wouldn't get decent weather for the climb or would otherwise have to reschedule.  As the weekend drew clearer it dawned on me that something would have to give.  A couple of fraught phone calls with my sister and mum later and I was still agonising. In the end the climb won.  I'm not particularly proud of myself.   Meanwhile Dave was experiencing his own difficulties, trying to explain to his wife and young daughter that despite the marginal weather this really was something worth abandoning them for a weekend for.  Dave, who did his PhD in british mountaineering history, pointed out that many of the really successful pioneering british climbers of the 60s, 70s and 80s - Boardman, Whillans, Tasker, Haston - were often, on a personal level, total bastards.  Maybe that's what's holding me back in my climbing - I'm too nice! I'm not sure my sister would agree.  Its also worth remembering that three of the four climbers I've just listed were dead by their early thirties.

2. Expect the unexpected

The week leading up to the climb was fraught. We both spent hours scouring the internet, looking for favourable weather forecasts.  We planned our route, checked ferry schedules and agonised over precisely what gear to take.  Eventually we were ready and I took the train to Dave's house in Sevenoaks for the drive north.  Except Dave's car wouldn't start. His protests that "its normally so reliable" and "I only drove it last week" didn't help.  I couldn't believe our adventure could be over before it got started.  45 minutes later a friendly AA man explained that it wasn't the car that didn't work, but the key.  Spare key in the ignition, car started, and we were on our way. 

3. You need drive to succeed

A long, long drive. 730 miles in fact.  We left Dave's house at 7.45pm and arrived in Thurso, on the north coast of Scotland, exactly twelve hours later. We drove continuously for twelve hours, taking two hour shifts at the wheel and snatching the odd twenty minutes of sleep in the passenger seat when tiredness overcame us.  It's amazing what you can find to talk about on a drive like that - which is the most manly variety of crisps (wheat crunchies); the appropriate time of day to drink espresso (any time after 11am); and what can properly be considered to be the "classical" method of opening a banana.  We also munched our way through bags of haribo, liquorice allsorts and chocolate eclairs.  Combined with the multiple cans of red bull I think I consumed my entire year's allowance of sugar in one night.  Utterly exhausted and desperate for something healthy to eat on arrival we headed straight for Thurso's best greasy caff and tucked into a pair of enormous cooked breakfasts. 

4. The smallest weather window is enough

Our pre-trip meteorological studies told us that two huge rain systems were heading right for the Orkney Isles on our chosen weekend.  The first was due to hit on Friday and scheduled to last all day Saturday, the second would hit on Sunday evening.  We planned to climb on Sunday as we'd need all day Saturday just to get onto Hoy.  Although it wasn't raining when we arrived in Thurso on Saturday morning, by the time we were on the noon ferry to the Orkney mainland it was drizzling consistently and by the time the second ferry deposited us on Hoy is was hammering with rain.  We found our way to the Rackwick hostel, revitalised with a quick cup of tea and headed out to have a look at the Old Man itself.  The signs weren't good - everything was wet, and getting wetter.  I couldn't see how it could possibly be dry enough to climb by the following day. But as Dave pointed out, the weather was for once behaving exactly as predicted.  On Sunday we left the hostel 5am.  An hour and a half by head torch brought us to the base of the stack where we geared up and made nervous small talk.  By some sort of meteorological miracle, our weather window materialised.  By pitch three the clouds were clearing and five hours after starting I found myself romping up the superb final pitch in blazing sunshine.  90 minutes and three abseils later (including one exhilarating 60m free hanging final abseil) we were lying on our backs in the sun struggling to believe we had actually done it.  An hour later it was raining again.  

The climb was everything we hoped it would be - varied climbing, tricky in parts, with the added spice of damp sandy conditions on the crux, and a generous dose of history thrown in for good measure.  Dave dispatched the E1 5b crux pitch with consummate ease and the final pitch might be one of the best I have ever climbed - delicate climbing up an exposed corner with the waves of the north atlantic crashing into the base of the climb 130m below.  What's next? I don't know. I'm told there are some decent multi-pitch classics in Yosemite valley.  Its only a four hour drive form San Francisco. And the weather in California is so much more reliable than Scotland. 

Mind over matter

The fridge door don't lie.

I am overwhelmed by feelings of pride for my wife.  Anita has to be the most positively determined person I have ever met. Yesterday she ran her first ever London marathon in the very respectable time of 4:21:23.  Looking at her split times she actually got faster towards the end - unusual in marathon running for all but elite runners.  It makes me wonder how fast she could have gone had she not submitted an ultra conservative estimated finish time and found herself starting right at the back with all the fancy dress participants (Anita told me afterwards that she spent the first five miles dodging giant caterpillars, wombles and pantomime horses, as well as fiddling with her iPod which had inexplicably set itself to play the same single ABBA song on repeat).


It could have been so different. Only seven weeks ago, following her first run after our return from South Africa, Anita started experiencing pain in her pelvis.  Several visits to doctors, chiropractors, physiotherapists and sports masseurs later, she had identified the problem as persistent softness in the ligaments of the pelvis - great for childbirth, not so good for long distance running.  Up to that date she was averaging over 30 training miles a week, with her longest run 17 miles.  Since then she managed only one long(ish) run of 10 miles and a couple of shorter jogs, and experienced a huge amount of injury-related frustration.  Her regular training regime was replaced with cycling round the park, core stability routines, stretching, and lots of exercises designed to strengthen what I can only describe as the 'bottom muscles' (apparently running is all in the bum).  All attempts to get back on track with actual running ended in frustration, tears or hobbling - often all three.


I think it is a measure of Anita's approach that what seemed to be worrying her most was not the fact that she was probably going to have to drop out of the marathon before she'd even run a step of the course, but that she was going to let down all those friends and family who had sponsored her by donating to Parkinson's UK, the charity for whom she was running in the great John Spickett's memory.  Several times Anita came close to emailing her deferment notice to the race organisers.  Each time we would discuss it and I would try and persuade her not to give up until she absolutely had to. And each time she would decide to give it another day just to see whether there was any improvement.  


This continued even through the week of the marathon itself, when she began to have serious concerns about the fact that she had not done enough long training runs.  At this point I looked to the wisdom of John Thicknes, my first ever university rowing coach.  On our local stretch of the river Avon we had a straight section of water, a little over 1km in length, down which we would race thousand metre sprints in preparation for our first regatta season as a novice crew.  I once asked Thicko (as he was known) whether this was adequate preparation for the up-coming university championships, bearing in mind that we would be racing over the olympic distance of 2km - pretty much double what we had ever done in training.  In a quiet voice, he explained my error: "The thing you need to understand, Dave, is that you can never train for the last 1000m. Thats because the second half of a race is all in the mind."


At the time I swallowed it whole.  Later I realised it was a clever bit of psychology to distract me from the inadequacy of our training facilities.  But now I know, as Anita showed on Sunday, that there is truth in Thicko's words.  After the marathon I asked Anita at what point in the race her pelvis started to hurt. She replied "right at the start, when I started running". She also told me that every time she even thought about walking she told herself to keep running for another minute, just to see what would happen. And she kept running all the way round, for over four hours and 26 miles.  It was a triumph of mind over matter. 


I am so proud. 

One year on

Eyeing THAT rounded bulge.
Right Unconquerable, Stanage.
Pic by Edwin Jenkins.

Last Friday, 13 April 2012, marked a year to the day that I wrecked me leg.  It is tempting to say that I don't know where the year has gone, but that wouldn't be true.  I know exactly where the year has gone - a blur of sleepless nights, changing nappies, hobbling around for weeks on crutches, interminably dull sessions on the leg press machine in an underground gym, physio sessions, swollen ankles, creaky knees and lots of painkillers. But thats just the bad stuff.  There has also been a huge amount of fun and laughter, mostly involving Lara.  In the space of a little over a year she has gone from a tiny helpless baby, seemingly incapable of doing anything other than sleeping, crying, eating and pooing, to a little girl - almost not a baby anymore - who laughs, smiles, gurgles, crawls, and most recently, toddles around taking her first tentative steps. Anita and I have gone from being a couple to being a family of three, and I find it difficult to remember what life was like before.  A lot quieter, probably.

I've also skied, climbed, and, last weekend, went for my first run in over a year (a paltry five miles - half the distance of one of Anita's 'short' runs). I've taken a pay cut, changed my job and joined the growing ranks of the part-time employed.  I have less money but far more time. And I'm having more fun than I thought possible.  Later today I'll head over to the climbing wall with my friend James and his son Louis.  Whilst the kiddos sleep we'll get a couple of hours of climbing in. But that's this afternoon.  Right now it's Monday morning, the sun is streaming in through the window and the coffee shop beckons.  Does life get any better?

Conquering the Unconquerable

Back safe and sound, and enjoying
the sunshine.

Spring has sprung in a big way here in the UK.  In fact, forget spring; it feels like summer is here already.  Before I get too excited I should remind myself that last year we also had a fantastic week of sunshine in April - it really felt like the start of the summer. Sadly, it turned out that that was the summer. Anyway, that was last year, and this is this year.  2012 holds great promise - so much to do, so much rock to climb. 


I've had something of a slow start to the climbing year - a result of a damaged finger ligament, holidays in the Lake District, South Africa and France, and a work trip to Hong Kong. Tough, I know, but someone's got to do it.  But things kicked off in earnest last weekend, with a trip to the spiritual home of hard gritstone climbing: Stanage Edge.   I have mentioned on a previous post about the unique qualities of gritstone - that it has no holds, or is one big hold, depending on your perspective.  For a glimpse into the harder end of hard grit climbing, you can do no better than watch the opening sequence to the imaginatively named film Hard Grit (there's a great youtube clip of it here).  On second thoughts, don't watch the clip, it might put you off your dinner.  


Thankfully, I am still operating at the easy end of the gritstone scale.  But the great thing about Stanage is that even at the lower end you can tick off some of the all time classic routes - routes put up in the forties, fifties and sixties before the age of comfortable harnesses and modern protection devices, when men (and it was mostly men) tied the rope around their waists and climbed in hobnailed boots (and then probably cycled 20 miles home, drank eight pints and had a fight). And so, on sunday, after a few warm up routes in the spring sunshine I tied in to my ropes for a slightly nervous attempt on the classic route The Right Unconquerable.  Long thought impossible, it was first climbed by the legendary Joe Brown in April 1949.  There exists a black and white photograph from the time showing Brown near the top of the route, his rope trailing downwards from his waist in a lazy arc to his belayer almost 20 metres below, unattached to anything that would stop him hitting the ground if he fell. He soloed the route first time, onsight - that is, with no prior knowledge of the route, how good the holds were, or even if it was possible.


The Right Unconquerable starts up a vertical crack before following an outward leaning flake up the steep face, to a final pull over an overhanging holdless capstone at the top of the crag. I checked the description in my guidebook: "Perhaps the most celebrated route on grit, and not without reason. Steep, and steeped in history, this climb could be amongst the finest hours in a climber's career, the heart of the gritstone experience.  A superb natural line is combined with arm busting climbing, with a generous dash of history thrown in for good measure. A fraught, belly-roll onto the holdless top awaits most." This did not fill me with confidence, but buoyed by Jon, Dave and Edwin's misplaced confidence, I set off.


The climb itself passed in a blur of pumped arms, heavy breathing and a rising feeling of panic.  I took a brief rest halfway up, once I'd passed the first crux.  I fumbled a small cam behind the flake, clipped in my orange rope and waited for my breathing to return to normal.  Before I knew it I was at the top, trying desperately to pull over the rounded capstone.  I somehow got myself into a position where I had most of my upper body onto the sloping top, but in doing so could no longer reach anything with my feet. I was in limbo - unable to push myself up, but with nothing of any purchase to pull on.  I stopped - half on, half off, feeling like I was going to fall, but realising that if I lay really still, I was safe.  I briefly wondered how long I could lie there for.  Eventually, through a combination of scratching with my fingernails and what I can only describe as humping the rock with my groin, I managed to slowly inch myself up.  When I realised I was safe, I let out what was intended to be a manly victory scream. Except, of course, I was in such a state it emerged as more of a strangled squeal of relief - what my friend Ted would call an "involuntary oral emission".  I'd made it! I was alive! I had lived to climb another route! 


The scale of difficulty for British climbs runs from 'Moderate' to "E11". Moderate climbs can comfortably be done in a pair of trainers; a fall from an E11 might result in death, or at least a couple of broken legs.  The Right Unconquerable is graded HVS, for "Hard Very Severe" - harder than Very Severe, but easier than Extremely Severe (E1).  HVS sits eight grades form the bottom of the scale, and eleven away from the top. By the time I had my moment of glory it had been climbed thousands, if not tens of thousands of times. I doubt I will be appearing in the climbing magazines any time soon.  Yet for the few minutes when I stood on top of Stanage Edge, enjoying the feelings of elation and relief, I felt, in my own insignificant way, like a bit of a hero.  The feeling was fleeting - within a few minutes I was wondering about the next challenge.  The answer is obvious really - one route along to the left, and one grade harder, sits another Joe Brown masterpiece: The Left Unconquerable. 

Two's company

Things are better together.  Greg and Ethan
contemplate the surf. (Pic by Carrie).

There is magic in the number two.  No, really, there is. Some time ago I heard a snippet of a programme on Radio 4 about the number two.  (The things they find to make programmes about on Radio 4 never cease to amaze me).  The snippet in question was a story about a young boy who went on to become a maths genius.  Whilst he was still in primary school, in an effort to keep the class quiet, the teacher told all the pupils to add together, without a calculator, all the numbers from 1 to 100 (that is, 1 plus 2 plus 3 plus 4 etc etc).  The boy in question put his hand up after a couple of minutes and announced he'd finished, and that the answer was 5,050.  The teacher was baffled at how he had done the sums so quickly. He explained simply that he'd divided the numbers from one to one hundred into pairs. Each pair added up to 101 (1 plus 100, 2 plus 99 and so on), and there were obviously 50 pairs, so the answer must be 101 x 50 = 5,050. Simples! 


Beyond the fantastic simplicity of such mathematical equations, I think there is magic in the number two on a different level.  My sister and brother in law have two daughters, and I have been lucky enough to spend the last fortnight on holiday with them in Cape Town.  What a fantastic place - sun, sand, sea, shorts, flip-flops, wine, steak, prawns, coffee, people enjoying the outdoors, having fun, relaxing, swimming, amazing scenery, its all there.  What was really magical though was seeing my nieces Emily (3 and a bit) and Lucy (one and a bit) playing together. They will, with luck, be great friends for the rest of their lives.  It got me thinking about the other half of my very own sibling twosome, my older sister Liz.  


Liz is many things that I sometimes wish I was: sensible, organised, calm, clear headed, infinitely patient. It was only fair that I got to put that last attribute to the test. One day on our holiday Liz and I decided we would walk up to the top of Table Mountain.  We got up at six, packed a single water bottle, a flap jack, a small handful of raisins and set off.  How hard could it be? The answer was: very hard.  First we climbed up an increasingly steep ravine. As we got higher, we progressed from walking, to scrambling, to pulling on exposed tree roots, to crawling on our hands and knees up steps of rock covered in dirt.  Eventually our way was blocked by a band of sheer cliffs, too high and too steep to scale.  I had earlier declared with totally unjustified (not to say illogical) confidence that the path we were on must take us to the top "because its too steep to climb back down".  It was only once our route terminated at the cliffs that we realised we had been ascending a dry river bed, rather than a marked path (in fairness, none of the paths were particularly well marked).  I looked at Liz and suggested we spent five minutes laughing hysterically, which we did.  We then sat down and consumed the flapjack and wondered what to do.  Liz suggested that since we could go neither up nor down, we should simply stay where we were and wait to die. She explained that she never thought her last meal would be half a flapjack - "It wasn't meant to end this way".


Of course, we made it back down the ravine and, as luck would have it, found the path that we should have been following.  To her credit, Liz suggested going up the right path to the top, although we were already over an hour behind schedule (I was assuming we were on our way down for coffee and cake).  She explained that her decision to go up was solely based on the fact that she couldn't bear to put in the effort only to be denied the crumb of satisfaction of having reached the top. I asked her "are you enjoying this in any way?". Liz confirmed she was not.  She clarified her position by further explaining that she would not be going walking with me again, ever, unless I could guarantee - GUARANTEE (her tone suggested capitalisation) that I knew where I was going.  My feeble explanation that an an adventure isn't an adventure if you know where you are going fell on deaf ears. To compound our comedy of errors, having reached the top and descended again, we managed to get lost in a maze of footpaths for an hour. We later realised that for that entire hour we were never further than ten minutes from the car.  We arrived home, hot, thirsty and exhausted, almost five hours after we set off for our two hour walk. 


But, and I appreciate that Liz may disagree, for me it was one of the best - if not the best - mornings of the entire holiday.  I got to talk to my sister, uninterrupted, for the entire morning.  No snatched conversation over lunch during the working day; no trying to concentrate on what each other was saying whilst keeping an eye out for accident-prone kids; no blackberries, phones or emails to interrupt the flow.  I loved every minute of it.  Growing up as children, Liz was at times my best friend, but also my worst enemy and tormentor (she once tried to bite my finger off and deliberately poked my birthday cake). Sometimes we would fight, physically - I think we both actually wanted to genuinely hurt each other. Later though I like to think our relationship matured.  Liz became my financial adviser, confidant, on-call taxi service and occasional money-lender.  Most recently she has been my career advisor, sounding board, emergency hospital visitor and childcare mentor. I may have got us lost on Table Mountain, but I can honestly say that on a more metaphorical level I would be lost without her.  I hope that one day Anita and I will be lucky enough to give Lara a sibling. Because for me, being one half of a two is magical indeed.

Childhood memories

Family activity in the Lake District.
Coniston, January 2012.

How early do childhood memories form? I have two memories which I have always thought of as my earliest. First, crawling around on a blue and orange patterned seventies carpet in an open plan living room; second, sitting on the kitchen counter every day asking my mum to make cucumber sandwiches for lunch.  Unfortunately both memories are almost certainly false.  Where did these memories come from? I have no idea.  I also recall being sick in my pushchair on an early holiday in the UK (spaghetti bolognese).  Do I really remember this, or have I been told about it? How many of our childhood memories actually come from photographs? I like to think I have a memory of sitting on my potty in the middle of a field whilst camping in the lake district aged one and a bit.  I couldn’t possibly have remembered this, and I suspect I’ve seen a photograph of the scene.  

I definitely do remember childhood trips to the Coniston in the Lake District from about the age of four.  Sleeping in an orange Vango Force Ten tent, playing in the stream at Hoathwaite Farm, clambering over piles of felled logs with Jonathan Quayle wearing canoeing helmets, sun-baked walks up the Old Man of Coniston.  Later on, orienteering in Torver Woods, capsizing Topper sailing boats on the lake, looking longingly at brightly coloured GoreTex jackets in Summitreks outdoor clothing shop. 

I have been revisiting some childhood memories this past week, with a trip to Coniston in the south Lakes.  Anita, Lara and I holed up in a teeny tiny cottage perched on a terrace high up with views of the village and lake.  It was a stunning location and the cottage was perfect - cosy rooms, an open fire and beautiful views from the windows.  At least the views were beautiful when we got them - the weather was almost continually terrible. Gales, rain, black skies and hail just some of the delights on offer.  We didn’t really manage the long country walks I imagined us taking together, although we did manage the long evenings lazing in front of the fire, which provided ample compensation.  We visited Coniston and Ambleside (complete with obligatory wander around Gaynor sports) and spent an afternoon at the UK’s biggest climbing wall in Kendal. We walked up to the old Coniston coppermines, around Torver Woods, and along the old Walna Scar road.  Lara has really taken to her new mode of transportation - her MacPac papoose (complete with rain cover); and will happily perch on my back for hours with a smile on her face, even as her little cheeks turn pink from the wind.  I’m sorry to say that she hasn’t yet managed her first trip up the Old man of Coniston - we turned back half way due to the weather being just too terrible even for her daddy’s levels of enthusiasm (as the saying goes: if you can’t see the Old Man its raining; if you can see the Old Man its going to rain. We saw it once, when the clouds parted briefly to reveal it covered in snow). There’s always next year. 

I love being in the Lake District.  I love everything about it: the mountains, the scenery, the walking, the smell of open fires in the evening, the atmosphere in the pubs, even the terrible weather.  I think partly I love it because it reminds me of my childhood. Whilst I spent only one or two weeks a year in the lakes as a child, my most vivid, colourful and adventurous memories are of this place.  At ten months I know Lara is too young to form her own memories of this trip, but I secretly hope that deep down a subliminal affinity with the Lake District - or at least the feeling of being outside in the mountains, whether in sun, wind or rain - is forming somewhere inside.  I can’t wait to bring her back here again, and it is exciting to think that soon enough she will start to remember.  What is most exciting of all is having a new friend to share it with.