Phew, that was close...

After my finger misery of the last post I continued to wallow in a depressed funk and was generally grumpy, not a great pleasure to be around for that time. Anyway come Saturday the finger, whilst still uncomfortable and not right, felt as though it could be climbed on. Obviously when I say it could be climbed on what I mean is any intelligent rational person would rest for a few more days and monitor progress before diving in at the deep end but obsession being what it is I climbed.
A delightful day was had with the Guru, the rare treat being a complete lack of curfew, this makes days out so much more pleasurable and relaxed. Guru made good progress on his chosen target and I likewise made inroads on a (hopefully) short term goal. The climbing was (or certainly felt) fingery and powerful so provided an adequate test-bed for finger damage assessment. And the verdict was that whilst it wasn't right, it wasn't that wrong either. Woop woop. Or so I thought...

Roll forward to Monday evening and I decide to try the board. The warm up went fine, although I still felt a bit stiff and sore from Saturday (it was a long day), and even the circuit went OK, two and a half laps (a couple of moves shy of my best) but then onto the power problems. Oooof, the finger didn't feel so good then. Hmmmm, a bit of thinking about things led me to what is a pretty obvious truth, sometimes when you think you're pulling hard on routes, you're just not. On the board or perhaps bouldering are when you really pull down.

Anyway whilst out on Saturday the Guru and I discussed our aims for the coming winter on grit and we both appear to be suffering from the same malaise towards grit bouldering. There's still problems out there to do, but the buzz isn't quite there. At first I thought maybe this was because (in my case at least) I wanted to cling onto the remains of the sport season and get a tick or two done. But a bit more analysis led me to the conclusion that the routes were calling, maybe it's time for me to get back on the trad? And to that end I think I'll spend the afternoon surveying a couple of local prospects. Cheery-bye...