Font trip 2006 retrospective

So, this is in effect a post-project review. Sad. Next time, I'll have a Gant chart! Anyway, in no particular order of priority:

• I was strong - should have got more done.
• I had real problems transferring that strength to the rock - getting the power onto the road as it were. That felt like a real technique thing - the majority of training for this trip was done on my board, or doing deadhangs and ladder work. So need more variety generally. Well, I already knew that, but it's a bit hard to get living in Hampshire!
• Preserve skin, rest properly.
• Take rest days.
• I don't live in Sheffield and do twenty hours climbing a week anymore. So don't get sucked into climbing with others that do! Further to that, I am only doing around five hours climbing a week. To get the stamina to do lots of climbing, you need to climb lots. No secrets, just hard work and time.
• Specificity! My training mainly consisted of doing thirty problems with two minutes rest. So I was fairly well primed for doing circuits of that length, but not a full day of all-out bouldering.
• Session peak. Doing twenty problems like that is not a good warm-up for climbing anywhere near my limit. Doing a short warmup and making the seventh problem that I do at my top-level would have been a better fit.

So major takeaways from that are that I need to climb more - I'm trying to address that by going to Craggy at lunchtime and getting some mileage in on the self-belayer as well as bouldering. That has its own pitfalls, but doing an additional 150 moves per session can't be a bad thing, even if it is climbing on blobs and routes that I know too well. Also, I need to start doing weights again. Not sure how I'm going to fit that in yet!