Progress

6a! Look what I did!

I'm full of too much food and cannot sleep. Pork belly to be precise. It's just laying there. I'm trying to tire myself to sleep by reading various bits and pieces and reading back my last blog post on nearly losing my earring, I appear to sound a little batshit crazy! Wow. I'm OK, just not then!

Anyway, my big news so far is that I managed to finally complete a grade 6a route in climbing! Go me! For those not in the know, it is the easiest of the harder sport climbing grades and since I was introduced to it, this was always my aim grade. And I managed to do it yesterday at White Spider. I'm still a little bit pleased with myself.

It's not winning an Oscar, getting a gold medal at the Olympics or winning the Tour de France. But it's my Oscar, gold medal and yellow jersey achieved. It was neither pretty, all that hard or completed in one as I had to rest while hoofing it up there but I still did it.  

The last few weeks of climbing with Mat are really paying off. I am getting stronger, getting leaner and getting better. I still have a very long way to go to call myself 'good' but I am enjoying it and that's all that matters.

I took up climbing as it seemed a fun form of exercise. And a lot of people I know and love are into so it must be good.  I signed up to take lessons on belaying, knot-work and good technique. I think I did get good and then I had to stop because inconveniently I was diagnosed with cancer way back then. The steroids made me huge and slowed me down. Climbing just became really hard so I stopped for a while but I persevered. From not even managing to finish 5 climbs, I have progressed to 10 progressing to 11 to hopefully 12 each time I go. I can do this and I enjoy it. I'm not going to let this bastard disease stop me. F%&$ you cancer! 

Progress indeed.

photo by shewithacapitalV