Well hopefully au revoir elbows and they'll come back soon. I've currently got acute tennis elbow in both elbows (during the first year in a decade in which my golfer's elbow actually cleared up - which coincided with a reflexology session in which a "left upper limb" pressure point was particularly prominent, hmmm...). This was due to 2 days bouldering at my near max in the cold, then a day of gym with weighted pull-ups, then a day of bouldering indoors and a few sets of max hangs. I probably should have slipped a rest day in there, because after that then some sporadic cold bouldering over the next week, the elbows gave up and said "no". The physio on the other hand said "yes" - but only to VERY easy climbing, essential to keep moving and keep gently stressing them to encourage healing.
Unfortunately of course the best option for interesting easy climbing, other than easy-but-epic choss sea-cliffs, is the grit (all those slabby bloques....sigh), and no I am still not fucking living back down there despite plans evolving and taking place at a pace that would make a snail feel lazy and embarrassed. And the weather is distinctly "meh". Not biblically terrible but not reliable enough to travel and know that lots of easy choice would be in nick. So back on the resin it is, thankfully the Edens have genuinely good easy circuits that avoid the tedious jugpull trap (as does the vastly improved new TCA Maryhill, but I did all theirs in a session). Even so it's very hard to restrain myself but hopefully I'll get the balance right and be fully dysfunctional before too long.
On a lighter note, this was the last proper thing I did on those two icy days bouldering, a couple of real gems that I haven't seen in the endless videos of Malc's fucking Arete etc:
Incidentally after listening to both Ingested's fantastic "Level Above Human" album, and Aborted's almost equally great "Terrorvision" repeatedly on that trip, I got back, googled them, and found that they were playing along with Cryptopsy in Glasgow the next Friday! So that was ace, alas I missed most of Ingested due to making too spicy a dinner, but their last bit was great as was Aborted's set.
And that's that for now. No retrospective of 2018 as I haven't written that much and it's all kinda obvious: got ill, climbed a bit, got depressed, struggled to climb a bit, got a bit less ill and a fair bit less depressed and climbed a lot more in Autumn #coolstorybro etc.
Oh, I almost forgot, New Year's Resolutions:
1. Put a lot more effort into moving south.
2. Put a lot more effort into climbing travels.
3. Keep looking after my health and healing.
4. Reduced as much clutter as I can.
Simple but to the point.
