The only experience I can only liken it to the first time you get behind the wheel on your own in a car after passing your driving test - daunting doesn't do it justice.
I got to the Mile End Wall about half an hour before Guy and decided to practice some bouldering (that's climbing without ropes).
In all honesty I was both nervous and somewhat intimidated. Nervous at the prospect of doing this on my own and the potential harm I may do falling down and intimidated by the large number of confident climbers already there moving like monkeys seemingly attached to the wall - they do may it look very easy. I waited for a gap, as there is a strict etiquette about these things, and went for it. I didn't have the fluid movement, in fact I felt like a giraffe frankly, but in my own ungainly way I made progress around the lateral wall and got further than ever before, so I left that feeling pretty good, and uninjured!!!
Next up was an upward climb, a considerably more daunting challenge given my previous "dislike" of heights. (Hats off to Adrienne Hunter of www.seeconsultants.org who recently qualified as an NLP Practitioner along with me who, appears to have relaxed me considerably using techniques we learned) Much to my own amazement as much as anything else I made it pretty comfortably, albeit when I went over the top I was a little dismayed as it appeared the ladder to get down had been moved, thankfully it was just hidden.
My confidence was high by the time Guy arrived. I don't think he will mind me saying that he was a bit worried about what he called his "knot dyslexia". Thus we focussed as much on tying and untying the knots as we did on actually climbing up the walls. By the end of the evening Guy had cracked and just as importantly we had a good session of climbing, challenging ourselves on harder climbs as the evening went on.
This morning I ached in my shoulders neck and fingers, other than that I feel ready to take on next week.
Thanks to everyone who has contributed so far, over £100 raised so far, it would be nice to get a total of £500. If any corporates reading this, I would be happy to sell some space on here for a contribution :)
No comments:
Post a Comment