Overhanging crackline fetish's

Of late, my weight has increased from about 11 stone 7 to 12 stone 3. I found this quite disheartening as i have been eating far healthier at Uni than while i was at home. But the most annoying factor has been my massive decline in form.

Admittedly to be climbing well, you need to be climbing regularly - which since i have got to uni i have found quite tricky. I'm not sure why, perhaps i've just had a poor winter seaon?
Either way, of late, i've not been at all up to E3's and i've been failing, massively on E2's.

Recently though, i've seen a bit of an increase in form. Successes on Suspense (E2) at Lawrencefield, Ram (E1 - Hard Work!) at Baildon and most noticeably, Satire (E2) at Baildon.

Satire, is a route that is described as 'making Higgar Tor look like a Slab'. Fair to say, even though its not exactly picturesque, it is fairly impressive! It takes a very overhanging crack system on the leaning wall of a pillar. Fallout from the route would be fairly painful as well as the gritstone slab behind is not that far due to the overhanging nature of the line. It just has to be climbed.

Via a collection of jams, armbars, footlocks and size 5 cams and a half height run out due to full body pump, i managed to sketchily mantle on to the top.

The top out itself isn't exactly hard, but i was pretty tired and i had a few anxious moments trying to hook over the lip. Awesome.

What has happened to me, i never used to fall off. Indeed i used to have a pretty major dislike of falling which i seem to have lost - is that a good thing? Also, I used to climb E3/4 on slabby, slightly technical boldish routes and now i'm spending the majority of my time hanging from Kneebars and amassing a collection of jamming scars. Perhaps, i'm just a tad to fat to climb routes that require finger strength these days and i'm sub-conciously drawn towards jamming and locking lines.

Whatever the deal, i'm starting to enjoy my climbing once again.