Tom Green wrote:
Skiing:
Finish in the top 10 overall in the SkiMo Scotland Race series (it's a fairly niche race so should be achievable) Done! Came 4th overall, although it was only out of 7 in the end as a couple of races were cancelled so a lot of people didn't qualify for the series.
Ski down a graded winter route (this is very much at the mercy of the weather) this didn't work out but I did manage to do plenty of skiing, 21 days in total including an awesome ski touring trip in the Pyrenees and a trip to meribel with Phil and Alice.
Running:
Get some Walshes (old school fell running shoes) Done!
Do the Cadair Idris race Done! Came 63rd of 213
Beat the train in the race the train race (14 miles hilly cross country in under 1hr 48) Done, beat the train by 2 mins and came 162nd out of 768
Do a half marathon faster than my first last year. I didn't do this, I'm definitely faster, I just didn't run one.
Do a classic running challenge (Welsh 3000's?) I didn't do this either, mainly as it would have been too much of a fitness commitment, and so would have conflicted with my other aims.
Climbing (I should at least be light from all the running):
Font 7C Didn't manage this, probably due to my lack of bouldering, (and 7C being quite hard!)I only did 239 problems this year (my least since 2010) compared to my peak of 513, I definitely boulder my best when I'm bouldering a lot! I will have to get serious about this unless it's going to end up being just a pipe dream!
The standard more routes, problems etc. than last year I'm counting this as completed as my trad went really well, I did nearly triple the number of routes I've ever done in a year before! (146 trads this year).
Tick some classics in the Lakes and W.ales Done, although I really enjoyed every route I did, every shag's a classic when you're psyched!
20 pull ups in a row/a one armer I didn't do this, but got way more consistent on pull ups. (I can pretty much always do 10 in a row now, which is an improvement but still pretty far away from my aim!).
Crush an (unripe) apple in my hand I have crushed many an apple, but this was a bit of a wooly aim, how do you quantify unripe? And crush is also open to interpretation, my future aims will be more specific. Another highlight was rolling up a frying pan at stanage with my bare (bear) hands, I should probably note that this was due to the weakness of the frying pan and not strongman like strength.
Other
Learn to surf Again this was an ill defined aim, but I did have 12 days surfing throughout the year and made a certain amount of progress.
Graduate (finally) Done!
Get a job... No job yet.
Make something cool made a few things but nothing too involved.
Overall I had a good year, with lots of ambition and a fair amount of realising my goals. I definitely ended the year fitter, stronger and more skilled than I started.
It looks like everyone else had a good 2014 as well, nice one! And here's to the next one!