About Me

My name is Mike. I’ll be 50 this year and I’ve been climbing since 2014. Bouldering is my thing.

When I started this journey it was all about being outdoors. I was going out to the national parks every weekend and walking up hills; climbing was a natural progression from that. Like many other climbers I got seriously into training during the first lockdown as I wasn’t allowed out to climb. Since then I’ve began to enjoy the training process for its own sake as well as the appreciating the obvious effect it’s had on my climbing progression.

Now I live in the Peak District and regularly climb at the Hangar in Sheffield, and Substation in Macclesfield while I wait for the rain to stop.

For years I’ve watched other climbers and noted that I’m progressing though the grades at a far slower rate than all of them. In hindsight this sounds like an obvious oversight but it was a revelation when it occurred to me – I was comparing myself to people who were half my age. So in an attempt to “level the playing field”, I decided to put myself in a similar hormonal environment to them.

I’m not at all the competitive sort and I’m not trying to beat anyone or be better. To me climbing isn’t about winning and losing in the slightest, it’s about the joy I get from it. I’m simply trying to maximise what I personally derive from climbing, by allowing myself a second chance at youth. While I’m at it I can document my journey as there seems to be very little information out there on performance enhancing drugs for climbers.

It was with this mindset that I got over my fear of needles and set about giving myself the first of my weekly testosterone injections.