July 20, 2011 George Foster

An Inspiring Title…..

Been having a fair bit of fun up in the Lakes for the past few months and over the next week and a bit I’ll be able to find out how soon all that will be coming to an end – if at all. In many ways I hope it doesn’t, and vice versa!

Alas the weather has been a big thing in sorting my ratio between running and climbing. I’m happy to say it’s been about 40:60 respectively. Not bad eh? Been climbing a lot on the board so hopefully I’ll soon be noticing the benefits of it on the big project down at Kilnsey. 

The good thing about the Lakes, one of them at least, is that there’s always some psyched people knocking about. Even better is that I’m by far the weakest of them all and yet they still seem cool about dragging me along! Bonus. Had a great day out the other week with Esther up on Dow. That girl’s a crusher! It was AWESOME weather and yet I could count the amount of other climbers on one hand……….get outside you fucks!! 

So anyway we managed to get ourselves up the crag classics of Isengard (HVS), Samba Pa Ti (E2), Holocaust (E4) and Tumble (tricky E4). Felt pretty beat up afterwards for sure. Especially after following Esther up Tumble…….shit me that’s a sustained bit of climbing but the girl didn’t even look pushed and brushed it aside with a modesty I envy. Watch this space for some hard E-numbers from her in the future! It’s good to get back on the proper onsight train though…..definitely makes the climbing a lot more interesting. On the reverse though, I now have a list a long as I imagine my *whoopsie* to be of routes that I want to do. It’s now a race against the weather as to whether we’ll be able to get them done!

When it is raining I try to get out running. Had a shit 10k race the other week in Hawkshead, which has signalled the end of my road-racing career….definitely prefer the off-road stuff. With that in mind me and Bob ran the classic Old Counties Tops fell run taking around 11 hours – a pretty poor effort but we’re gonna give it another bash to get a more respectable time I promise! (The pics below are: view from halfway down Scafell Pike [the second of the 3 ‘Tops’] towards Great Moss – a whopper bog – and a long way behind that hill, the Old Man of Coniston the last of the ‘Tops’ – arse; us at Helvellyn – still looking fresh; me and Bob on Scafell Pike – I’d just hit what I now understand as ‘the wall’ – arse, again; the easiest E3 in the world??)

The big running proj….. is the Langdale Horseshoe fell race which comes up sometime in October. It’s the local – as local as it gets given that it starts 300m from my door – one so there’s no excuse not to give it a right old effort. There’s some proper mountain goats out there though!!

Anyway got my mid-year resolution……buy a new bastard camera! 

NB: got some photos up for you now Micah. Just. For. You.

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