To fail to prepare is to prepare for failure.

It is now just under five weeks until I head South to the land of good coffee, exceptional pastries and climbing glory. Which realistically means I have four weeks of training time and then a week of generally trying not to get injured.

The problem is I'm nowhere near where I wanted to be at this time. I was hoping to be at the point where I'd ticked some more hard (for me) problems and could then spend four weeks just consolidating the burl and picking on specific highlighted weaknesse (this all sounds far more scientific and organised than the reality of what would have happened but hey-ho). Instead I feel like I've hardly climbed anything since the new year. In reality this isn't true, I've done several 7's including a 7C in a few goes which I would never have expected to have done last year. I think the problem is I've set my expectations to high and am disappointed when I fail to crush things that I think I should. It's easy to forget that 7A is hard, lots of people never climb 7A. So if you've recently done one give yourself a pat on the back regardless of what grade you normally climb.

So anyway this expectation has had a very negative effect on my motivation. To be honest this little Font aim (and the various other aims that have gone on as stages in the ultimate aims development) is the first time that I have ever focussed on a grade based goal. I've always previously had aspirations (as we all do) but they have been less well formed and specific. I'm not used to being so targetted in my approach and I have let it take over and remove some of the fun for me. And for me fun is everything for climbing. When I say fun I don't mean the "ooo aren't I happy and smiling so this is great" fun I mean in a broader sense, perhaps satisfaction would be a better word.

So my satisfaction has been reduced, not because I was climbing badly. Far from it, I am on the best form I've had for the last well... several years. But because I felt I was failing to achieve my expectations. I fell into the trap I've been wary of from day one. What a fool.

Anyway I am unlikely to tick any of my BIG 4 problems in Font. I'm still going there with the same list, and I'm still going to try and crush them. However whilst I'm not approaching this in a negative fashion, I am perhaps being more realistic. The ultimate goal was always going to be longer term than this years trip to Font and I think over the last couple of weeks I sort of lost sight of that. Enough of my warbling, the upshot of all of this is that now I am super psyched to climb, I had a good session on the board last night and I'm keen for more.

Bring it on...