Bouldering

The day finally came around (after the disappointment when they ran out of tickets two weeks ago) for bouldering. Finding myself at the gym was very weird as the only other time I've been there is for exams. It took me a while to find the reception and then a further few minutes to find the bouldering wall. The problem with a lot of these programmes is that they assume you know where to go and when the ticket simply says Goodwin - a complex with at least three buildings, you don't know where to go. It probably wasn't the best choice of day either now that I think about it as I had already been in for 6 hours without a break (unless you count standing outside my tutors office for half an hour, more about that later)

On the whole, the bouldering was pretty good fun. I got back into it reasonably quickly and managed to do some of the more complicated walls with a bit of help from the instructor. Without him the event would have been a disaster because the majority of the walls were designed to be quite difficult or at least challenging for those who use the facility on a regular basis. I was expecting to turn up and be paired up with someone, geared up with harnesses etc and then have a ten minute safety talk before we got to do anything but none of the walls were more than about ten or fifteen feet tall so all of that went out the window. This put me off a little bit at first because the last time I climbed a wall without the safety equipment, I fell of and winded myself quite badly. The padding was a little better here though and I am significantly taller than I was the last time I did anything like this so I took those as my cues for a bit of confidence.

The safety talk consisted of two minutes of the guy saying, use common sense, if you think you can do it, try. If you don't, don't. Wise words really and for the first twenty minutes or so, this worked quite well but we soon ran out of the simpler walls and were starting to get a bit bored. Thankfully, he appeared and started giving us some tips for climbing the more difficult walls. Apparently you must be like a ballerina rather than relying on brute strength which is a blessing really because I am lacking somewhat in that department. He gave us a demonstration on a couple of the walls and then gave us pointers as we climbed which meant that the walls we had tried before and failed to climb were now possible. He also made some of the simpler walls more difficult by asking us to try them without using several of the shapes which went surprisingly well but made us think about how we were going to climb them before we started.

By the time I got home I was knackered and my arms felt like they were about to fall off. I wasn't going to get any work done this evening but I am working tomorrow and so I should have a good three or so hours to do it then.

I was in a bit of a panic earlier because I was about ten minutes late for my dissertation meeting, thankfully, my tutor had been on the phone and I ended up waiting a further half an hour almost before he let me in to see him. It's probably just as well I did wait though because he was expecting me to be there and if I'd have disappeared out of boredom and frustration then that would have looked quite bad. It was tempting though because he didn't even acknowledge my presence instead leaving me to assume that he heard my rather faint (out of politeness) knocking but I am far too patient so I waited.