Impressive footage of Tom sending the gritstone testpiece, Voyager 8b at Burbage North.

Tom Newman - Voyager 8b from Bystander films on Vimeo.

Of Late Again 27/10/12

Well as I have written in my other updates I’ve been getting out and about recently. Two weeks ago the mileage I have put into the Gritstone paid off as my gangly body managed to pull me up The Ace at plantation. This problem seems to have quite a bit of history behind it which made the send that extra bit satisfying.

Since then I’ve not had chance to get out due to illness and work at the new wall in Nottingham. Considering the lack of advertisement the wall seems to have become really popular already. I’m aware it’s still early days, but for now it has been great to help manage the place and try to assist in its ever growing popularity. Working down here has also showed me a vast amount of decent climbers I simply didn’t know existed which is always great to find out, especially when a board scene seems strongly evident within the first night of the place opening.

With everything starting to slowly settle down again, I’m hoping to see myself getting back outside and getting more classic hard boulder problems with I bunch of new, keen, motivated people.

Ps I promise my next post will have pictures or some form of media in, just looking at text is possibly the most un-inspiring thing known to man

Tom

Switzerland 2012 9/8/12

Well the trip to Switzerland this year consisted of me and and this guy, Adam Watson.

Unfortunately the trip started off with a bad omen........

Read on here: http://lankman.blogspot.co.uk/

Bits and Bats 12/6/12

Well this weekend consisted of the City Bloc competition in Leeds. I won't bother giving you a step by step talk through of how the day went. The problems were good and the final was hard. Once again I was thwarted by Dave Barrans to be placed 2nd behind him, but this time he didnt just beat me normally, he beat me whilst totally jet lagged :-(, my day will come...........Anyhow, cheers to the city bloc boys and my winnings for second. The week before I got out down to the peak and nipped up a good roof climb called Andronicus 8a/+. Here's some footage of me on it. Apologies for the picture being cut off at the end, I purched the camera on a rock and it couldnt fit the whole problem in. Andronicus Serious Video!

WARNING - contains footage of me in extremely tight pants!

Competitions

Well where do I start, competitions are HARD! Months of dedicated training session's before work all for 45mins to try and shine against the world's best. The last 2 weeks have certainly been an eye opener for me! 8c crusher's making it no where near the semis let alone the finals and random nobody's smashing hard climbs, weird! From 29th in Slovenia last weekend I was hoping to better my score this weekend but sadly it wasn't to be. I'm not one to make excuses BUT i was feeling pretty rough in the isolation zone before going out to climb which is definitely something that sapped my psyche! Until coming out to see my first climb it looked like my bag, double dyno to two big holds. 1st go fail. 2nd go fail. 3rd go easy, why did I not do it first?!?! The same happened on problem 3, and the rest is history as they say! It seems like the mistakes were well punished in this competition. So I find myself asking what do I now, the answer is obvious................ sneak into the Russian and Austrian training camps like a ninja and spy on them, what the hell do they do to have such high consistency on the comps.

All in all Slovenia was good and Vienna was bad for me, not because of the setting but because of my performance, that is that! I definitely feel motivated to come home, get back to the drawing board and have another go. Signing out, Gangle!

Comps

So I decided to have a bosh at the city bloc competition over the weekend. This was just a small competition but I decided to give it a go for the crack, so upon my arrival I was kinda shocked to see half of the british bouldering team there :-(. Anyway I got stuck in and ended up climbing quite well to qualify in 3rd place for the finals (6 went through to the finals).

The isolation zone was a little nerve racking as the commentator gave us a good idea of where each competitor got to, so each of us had a rough idea how good we had done on each problem. Anyway The final consisted of 3 blocs (after 40 qualification climbs), I flashed the 1st and the 3rd one but got totally shut down on the 2nd one. This however proved enough to get 1st place and win a cheeky £100. The money was well spent on rent and my girl friend!

Wales

Adam Watson, Dave Jones and myself had a team trip down to Wales this weekend just gone. Although the weather was predominatly rubbish, we still managed to get some good things done. First up was Clyde, after a couple of goes I was getting to the final move quite quickly but kept dropping the hard finish move. I had a look in the guide at the picture of Jordan Buys on it and realised I was using the wrong beta. Therefore the next go with new beta ended with me at the top of the climb.

After this we decided to check out the new (ish) area called Crafnant. Once the steep walk in was complete the first problem we got stuck into was Special K. My foot popped on the first move on my flash attempt. I sat down chalked up at went again all the way to the top. Big man Watson stepped in after me with an impressive flash. This problem is so much easier for the tall and therefore was a completly different problem for DJ. After a bit of work he smashed it rather impressively with a different sequence to adam and me. After this we quested around the other side of the bloc and did a very crimpy wall with a tricky mantle. I don't know whats its called but it looked good with moves off crystal crimps up to a ramp. Tres Bon

Next day the weather was some how worse so the cave was the only option again! This time was the High Life. Its hard to grade this once because it like 30 moves. Anyhow after a bit of work I got up it quite quickly then watched Adam get robbed on the last move of Broken Heart on his flash attempt. That didn't seen to phase him too much though as he then went on to do it second go!

Tom regularly updates his blog and this can be accessed at:

http://lankman.blogspot.com/