Friday 8 May 2015

Happiness is found at 600m

After the events of the last couple of weeks, I've sorely needed a visit to my happy place. With the forecast being a tad dour, I sent my boots off to Llanberis Resoles for some TLC and some offwidth cheating upgrades, and got out my Scooter.

Marchlyn Mawr seemed an obvious choice, let me try to explain....

I have in my "Marks Boring Rocks" folder on the family computer a file called "tick list". This little campaign strategy table contains the 14 ticks for this year as well as staged goals, conditions requirements, and special kit needed etc. It seems to be getting a lot of red on it (ticking off the accomplishments), but it has also acquired two new columns; Am I Finished with this, and Can I be Arsed.

With two ticks on the Had Enough list, the motivation assessor has only 5 ticks approaching the Red Setter mark.

The sitter into Tumbleweed is one of them.

The Goal

The walk up to the Dam took 32 minutes (scooter and v. light bag, a couple of photo's and a quick chat on way) and the tide was well out already (1030 no less) but that probably could be blamed on the election..

The excuse for coming up was to apply a bit of science to the problem. Mainly this meant identifying a sequence, The issue being that there was two possibilities; go out left to some opposing sidepulls, or slap up right up the arete. Going left seemed unfeasibly hard to start, then relenting into the realms of merely trying very hard. I could slap to the arete (and did last visit) but making progress into the stand would require these.
Steep!

An impossible start or impossible finish? I decided to only attempt the possible bits, and then try to yard between them... slap into the arete and then connive to throw back left into the sidepulls. Who knows? it may work!
A sloper

So back to the science

Issue 1:
I need to improve on slopers
Solution:
Actually use a Beastmaker

Issue 2:
Most of the movement initiation is from Foot clamp derivitives
Solution:
Increase core and Practice practice practice

Issue 3:
The sidepulls are well crimpy
Solution:
In reality I probably only need a 20% increase in finger strength so just climb more!

Issue 4:
It a bit overwhelming
Solution:
Staged goals- Tiny ones! and hoover up some satellite problems to keep the happy coming while you're at it.


After that it was a bit of cleaning, a few more rocks to the patio, and off to scoot!
Just as the rain started.
The patio is getting well gucci


10 minutes 50 seconds to descend, hindered by one crash due to the action of rain on the breaking system*, and some wimpy attempts at preventing a second crash by reducing general velocity.


Happy (and not too sore)


*wet cold wheels mean no/reduced breaking, as they get hot the water evaporates and you get lots of breaking. In reality this meant shit shit shit LOCK, a bit of fishtail and a running dismount. Constant gentle breaking seems to be the way to get wet wheels dry and breaking in a less laxative fashion.


PS. I was trawling through the stats on this blog, and it seems the "Baron and the Bolt Fairy" was a popular choice of referral for a number of Russian porn sites. I guess I should be a bit more careful with my title choice.....


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