New coach in the town
For a Tuesday session I went to Boulderbar Hannovergasse for a "quick" session with some of my colleagues and Christoph. I was thinking about to do a lot of easy problems (5's and 6a's) to train some endurance to the upcoming climbing trip, but as usual the gym was packed. We decided to give the Vertical Life's training program a go. We chose the High-Volume Bouldering and really got tired half way through the program.
The first thought is that it's nice to have problems assigned and not think about what to do next. (Also we named it coach Bob, so it's harder to say no :D ) Some problems that we've found: not always easy to walk to the next problem and have to wait for others to finish; the grades can be really hard or easy depending on the setters and the gym. We set our flash level to 6a+, which is usually fine in this gym. The second go was 6b, which really depends on the problem. Here we found 6b's we couldn't start, and some we could easily manage to flash.
In the middle of the session Bob told us to do a very hard 6c (6c's are usually very hard for us in this gym). So we had to skip and also quit unfortunately.
We decided to test it next time on a weekend afternoon, when the place is not that busy. Also set the level down with one grade.
Back to the UK
I had a short stay in Bristol and met my friends for a couple of sessions. On Friday Nicola brought me to Flashpoint. This place opened recently a couple of month after we moved to Austria, so all the walls are still very much clean. The problems were real challenging above a grade, and I managed to do some V4's (6b-6b+).
Next day I went to Redpoint with Nicola, Sam and Mark. It was a real pleasure to do a session there, as the routesetting is always exceptional. Finally I did a 6b+, first in this year. After the session Mark and I stayed for a pint and talked about the upcoming Spanish climbing trip.
The best of this short trip was to see my friends and have some quality time climbing and talking to them.
Still miss all of you.
Master of science
The main reason of my travel was to attend to my wife's graduation ceremony from the Bristol Uni as she finished her masters. I am very proud of her and I think it's an amazing achievement to finish this degree while working and supporting me in life as well.
Emi you are the best!