2014 Round Up

The end of 2014
Here we are on the eve of a new year, so it's time to look back on the last 12 months and see what has been going on.  2014 has been quite a tough year really, and I won't be too sad to see the back of it.  Various family tragedies and sadness have put a bit of a downer on the year, and I'm very much looking forward to 2015 being a year of happiness.  But let's put a happy spin on matters and see what positives 2014 gave us:

January
Quiet month, got out running a fair bit.

February
Grizedale UltraTrail 26  43.6km  1183m ascent  5:46:59
A fun day out in less than ideal conditions.

March
I grabbed a day out at Cadshaw and nailed two first ascents, Rakkety Tam (a great 6b+ dyno) and Outcast (a fun 6c/+ traverse with a really nice slopy sidepull).

April
I spent a couple of hours at Denham, did two 7as (R-man's Living Next Door to Acid and my own Snap Derision) and added a sitter to Hypno-TOad, at 7a-ish.  Very pleasing day out!
I also ran the Yorkshire 3 Peaks for fun and training:  38.6km and 1442m ascent, in 6hrs 28mins.

May
Howgills UltraTrail 26  42.5km  1153m ascent  5:58:41
UTLD Recce - Pooley Bridge to Ambleside  46.2km  2000m ascent  7:40.  Ouch.

June
Three Rings of Shap, my longest event to date.  104.5km and 2008m ascent in 20:12.  Took my feet quite a while to recover from this one.

July
UTLD 50 80.9km, 2774m ascent, 17:17:16.  Really enjoyed this one, and it felt OK.  I'm sure it won't after doing the first 55 miles of the hundred next time around.

August
Got another year older, and had two weeks in France.  Our holiday was rather disrupted by the death of my father in law and my wife's ankle injury and huge reaction to oysters, but we still managed some really good days.

September
Not a lot really.

October
Rivington Trail 26:  43km and 1229m ascent in 5:48:46, slower than last year.
The Lancashire Bouldering Guidebook arrived too, which has been long awaited and very well received.  I'm not sure it'll make my fortune or if I'll become a celeb, but it looks good and has some fantastic problems in it.

November

UTLD Recce - Coniston to Buttermere.  42.5km and  2057m ascent in just under 9 hours.  Much slower than I had wanted.

December
Had a really good day with the family, which felt very relaxed, despite another bereavement on Christmas Eve.  Best Christmas dinner ever!!  Great set of presents all round too.




Aims for 2014
So what of the aims for 2014?  Rather a mixed bag really:
 
1.  Use the board at least once a week.
Running got in the way somewhat, but for a while I was on the board regularly and feeling stronger.  Slipped a bit recently but very keen to get back on it and get stronger.

2.  Boulder 7C or harder. 
Not a chance.

3.  Reacquaint myself with Silverdale after two years of not visiting.
I didn't visit this year, and I've only been out on rock a handful of times.  Again, running has taken over.

4.  Do some trad with Nik at Work.
To my shame (and the cat eating all my trad gear), this never happened.

5.  Tick two problems from the last few years Aims For lists. 
There's a theme developing here.....

6.  Run another hill marathon or two.
Grizedale Ultra Trail 26, Howgills 26, the Three Rings of Shap 100km, the Lakeland 50, Rivington Trail 26 and UTLD recce.  6 hill marathons ticked this year.  I've run 1009.4km this year, with 18,266m of ascent.  Wow.

7.  Find some new rock and do a good FA.
No new rock yet, but 3 FAs which is pretty good.

8.  Do at least twenty new Wainwrights.  
No new Wainwrights at all this year!  I've run past a lot though.

9.  7b in Font.
Err, no.

10.  Read ten more books from the BBC Big Read top 100. 
Didn't manage ten, but I'm up to 44% read now and still trawling through Middlemarch:

1. The Lord of the Rings, JRR Tolkien
2. Pride and Prejudice, Jane Austen
3. His Dark Materials, Philip Pullman
4. The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy, Douglas Adams
5. Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire, JK Rowling
6. To Kill a Mockingbird, Harper Lee
7. Winnie the Pooh, AA Milne
8. Nineteen Eighty-Four, George Orwell
9. The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe, CS Lewis
10. Jane Eyre, Charlotte Brontë
11. Catch-22, Joseph Heller
12. Wuthering Heights, Emily Brontë
13. Birdsong, Sebastian Faulks
14. Rebecca, Daphne du Maurier
15. The Catcher in the Rye, JD Salinger
16. The Wind in the Willows, Kenneth Grahame
17. Great Expectations, Charles Dickens
18. Little Women, Louisa May Alcott
19. Captain Corelli's Mandolin, Louis de Bernieres
20. War and Peace, Leo Tolstoy
21. Gone with the Wind, Margaret Mitchell
22. Harry Potter And The Philosopher's Stone, JK Rowling
23. Harry Potter And The Chamber Of Secrets, JK Rowling
24. Harry Potter And The Prisoner Of Azkaban, JK Rowling
25. The Hobbit, JRR Tolkien
26. Tess Of The D'Urbervilles, Thomas Hardy
27. Middlemarch, George Eliot
28. A Prayer For Owen Meany, John Irving
29. The Grapes Of Wrath, John Steinbeck
30. Alice's Adventures In Wonderland, Lewis Carroll
31. The Story Of Tracy Beaker, Jacqueline Wilson
32. One Hundred Years Of Solitude, Gabriel García Márquez
33. The Pillars Of The Earth, Ken Follett
34. David Copperfield, Charles Dickens
35. Charlie And The Chocolate Factory, Roald Dahl
36. Treasure Island, Robert Louis Stevenson
37. A Town Like Alice, Nevil Shute
38. Persuasion, Jane Austen
39. Dune, Frank Herbert
40. Emma, Jane Austen
41. Anne Of Green Gables, LM Montgomery
42. Watership Down, Richard Adams
43. The Great Gatsby, F Scott Fitzgerald
44. The Count Of Monte Cristo, Alexandre Dumas
45. Brideshead Revisited, Evelyn Waugh
46. Animal Farm, George Orwell
47. A Christmas Carol, Charles Dickens
48. Far From The Madding Crowd, Thomas Hardy
49. Goodnight Mister Tom, Michelle Magorian
50. The Shell Seekers, Rosamunde Pilcher
51. The Secret Garden, Frances Hodgson Burnett
52. Of Mice And Men, John Steinbeck
53. The Stand, Stephen King
54. Anna Karenina, Leo Tolstoy
55. A Suitable Boy, Vikram Seth
56. The BFG, Roald Dahl
57. Swallows And Amazons, Arthur Ransome
58. Black Beauty, Anna Sewell
59. Artemis Fowl, Eoin Colfer
60. Crime And Punishment, Fyodor Dostoyevsky
61. Noughts And Crosses, Malorie Blackman
62. Memoirs Of A Geisha, Arthur Golden
63. A Tale Of Two Cities, Charles Dickens
64. The Thorn Birds, Colleen McCollough
65. Mort, Terry Pratchett
66. The Magic Faraway Tree, Enid Blyton
67. The Magus, John Fowles
68. Good Omens, Terry Pratchett and Neil Gaiman
69. Guards! Guards!, Terry Pratchett
70. Lord Of The Flies, William Golding
71. Perfume, Patrick Süskind
72. The Ragged Trousered Philanthropists, Robert Tressell
73. Night Watch, Terry Pratchett
74. Matilda, Roald Dahl
75. Bridget Jones's Diary, Helen Fielding
76. The Secret History, Donna Tartt
77. The Woman In White, Wilkie Collins
78. Ulysses, James Joyce
79. Bleak House, Charles Dickens
80. Double Act, Jacqueline Wilson
81. The Twits, Roald Dahl
82. I Capture The Castle, Dodie Smith
83. Holes, Louis Sachar
84. Gormenghast, Mervyn Peake
85. The God Of Small Things, Arundhati Roy
86. Vicky Angel, Jacqueline Wilson
87. Brave New World, Aldous Huxley
88. Cold Comfort Farm, Stella Gibbons
89. Magician, Raymond E Feist
90. On The Road, Jack Kerouac
91. The Godfather, Mario Puzo
92. The Clan Of The Cave Bear, Jean M Auel
93. The Colour Of Magic, Terry Pratchett
94. The Alchemist, Paulo Coelho
95. Katherine, Anya Seton
96. Kane And Abel, Jeffrey Archer
97. Love In The Time Of Cholera, Gabriel García Márquez
98. Girls In Love, Jacqueline Wilson
99. The Princess Diaries, Meg Cabot
100. Midnight's Children, Salman Rushdie





So what of next year?
As I mentioned on UKB, I have 2 aims for 2015:
1.  Don't die trying to do the Lakeland 100.
2.  Get back to climbing after the Lakeland 100.

The UTLD 100 makes me nervous, not so much because of the distance but more that the cut off times a quite tight for a slow runner like me.
I'm looking forward to getting back on the rock, and the new Lancashire Bouldering Guidebook is there to give inspiration.

More than anything, what 2014 has shown us all is that life is precious and rather fragile.  It's too short to get up tight, and to worry about minor issues.  It should be lived to the full, taking any opportunity going and wringing all we can from it.  I'm very lucky to have a fabulous wife and step-children, and such a great home life.  Not everyone has that, and I'm realising more each day how lucky I am.

So here's to 2015 - let's make it a great year.  Happy New year everyone.