Can You Smell What The Rock Is Cooking?

I am one of nature’s more chilled people, but get me next to a stupidly high edifice and I start thinking about how quickly I could get to the top of it using the rock-climbing tools that seem almost perpetually to be in my back pack. It is a weird kind of obsession that I have, but I think the feel of solid ground just bores me to a point where I decide that vertical is the way to go. In case you were about to ask, yes, everyone thinks I am weird. No, I don’t mind. Heck, half way through them telling me I am weird I generally start thinking about how I could climb the wall behind their head anyway, so it is not as if I’m really paying attention or anything anyway.

I have been climbing since high school – and I’m about to graduate from university, so that makes for just about ten years now. The moment I decided to take it up was an interesting one, which probably could have gone any number of ways. I was watching a documentary about some French guy who climbs up the sides of the world’s biggest buildings – without permission – and usually gets arrested and let off with a caution, but only after gaining the attention of a watching world. Now, watching that show could just as easily have convinced me that what I wanted to be was an architect. There were some pretty stunning buildings in it, after all. But no, it was the shots of him hundreds of meters up with little to keep him up there that really enthralled me. I’m not about to do what he does – quite apart from anything else it would only lead to accusations of unoriginality – but I don’t mind admitting that it’s what led me to try out rock climbing.

I’ve been climbing competitively for a little while now, and while I don’t always win I have found that I place near the front almost exclusively. One good reason for this is that I really take care of myself physically. At the gym, in the canteen and at home I devote a lot of time to thinking about how I can improve my physique and my physical fitness. One thing I have found is that drinking water as regularly as I can manage really adds to my sharpness. I cut out soft drinks entirely a few years ago (I have one every now and again now, because self-deprivation seems a little bit unnatural) and the extra energy I felt day to day was incredible.

Whatever anyone else says, I think water gives me an edge when I am racing. Certainly when it comes to that point in the race where I feel like I’m about to crash, I take a good glug out of the hydration pack I take everywhere, and it always gets me over the bump. Water really is ridiculously important, and I only wish I’d realised that a little bit earlier.