Sunday at Chapel.

Can't believe that pun hasn't occured to me before now...

But first Friday on the board. Another reasonable session on the board, getting even closer to the long term project, the top now feels like a formality (after initially feeling desperate). The first "slap" is feeling more and more static, I've still not properly held the hold but I'm definitely hanging it for a brief period of time. Yes that makes no sense, so sue me. Also managed to get one more move on the circuit, three laps is close now. All of this is very boring though, reading about moves I can do a few times or moves I can't do once which aren't even made of real rock on a poxy home board that you've quite likely never seen. Maybe I'll sort out a bit of video of it, still dull, but even more self-indulgent on my part...
Anyway the bad thing about the Friday training session was a left middle finger split tip, annoyingly postioned for Sundays plans which I hoped to involve pulling down hard on shallow left hand two finger undercuts. Bugger.

Saturday was epic in length, constant activity from 6am until 2am Sunday morning then up again at 6am Sunday morning feeling a little jaded. But the weather was nice so myself and Lard packed up the car and hit the road. Mrs Me's enthusiasm to come along that she expressed at the tail end of last nights activities had strangely dissapeared in a mere 4 hours of sleep, odd. A blast accross and up the motorway saw us once again trudging across the scree to Chapel Head and it was rather wet. Sexpest and family arrived shortly and discussions were had about staying or heading for pastures alternate. Sexpest had the final word, we stayed (I agreed with his view, after all Surfing With The Alien was dry enough to try). So SP and Mrs SP set about warming up on a route that was approximately 18 miles long while I stuck some clips in Surfing. After they'd returned to terra firma and recovered from altitude sickness I had a dabble on Surfing and gave it a brush, then a rest then redpoint one. I surprised myself by getting through the crux move then my foot popped, bum. Then a bit more dabbling with the third clip (which is really hard), SP had a play and slightly refined the footwork to good effect (still nails mind). I had another couple of red-points, my best effort being getting the third clip (back clipped mind, doh) and then falling. Doesn't sound like much but that's only one move from having done all the hard climbing (leaving only a bit fairly easy stuff and the fickle conditionsy last move). Anyway my skin was VERY sore and the split was growing at a quite alarming rate so I binned it feeling sure that any further attempts would be less successful and more painful. The SP family persevered with their mountaineering efforts, surely they both ticked 8,000 metres. I had a rubbish play on Zantom Phone where I just managed to make myself appear completely incompetent and I confirmed my suspicions that I was very tired and pretty much climbed out.
So Surfer is definitely on, I got close today and about the only two postive things were (1) that I had a pre-worked sequence that only needed minimal tweaking and (2) SP had provided SYKE in the form of 13 wolf power fleece, monster. Whereas the negatives were (1) conditions were not amazing (but to be fair it wasn't awful either) (2) I was very much tired and not on top form (3) skin issues in the critical postion on the critical finger on the critical hand. Next time it should go.

Monday evening I tried to have a board session, I warmed up on monster holds and felt a bit sore and tired but OK. Then I got on the circuit, which has some smaller holds, and it just felt like the split was being ripped apart. Not good, so I binned it. I now feel like I could hit the board tonight and have a good session apart from the split, a bit frustrating. Maybe I'll chance it...