All about the training

With hurricane force winds, rain and generally foul weather seemingly having being set in for weeks on end, my winter season has yet to really get going. A brief weekend of climbing over in North Wales was great and I could feel a bit of winter psyche returning, now it has definitely disappeared again!

Another disappointment was the cancellation of a trip to the Ecrin for the ice festival, conditions out there are pretty poor, loads of snow now but October/November were really dry so the ice just isn't forming very well. Plenty of snow for skiing............ but that isn't much help.

On the positive side I have embarked upon an actual training plan - instead of my usual climb as much as possible with very little system approach. It will be really interesting to see the effect this has on my winter over the next couple of months and my rock climbing come the spring. I'm hoping that the short term gains will do me some favours when I head out to Canada in about 5 weeks time - I'm gonna be needing some guns to keep up with Gordon McArthur - my host for the trip. He's been putting in some time on the tools and developing a crag near his home in Cranbrook, British Columbia - he's promised to keep some lines for me, now I just have to hope I can climb them! Gordon if you are reading this - the easy lines are the ones for me!!