Youth Open and Christmas Crush!

For the past few months my main focus has been bouldering so I could hopefully get selected for the GB Team during the selection event over a week ago now. The run up to the event was torture, I started having lots of problems with my mental attitude towards the competition going from feeling incredibly psyched and strong to feeling terrified and weak. I had several sessions at different climbing centers a couple weeks before the event to get some variety in and had such a mix of emotions about it all I just couldn't understand what was going on. First of all I was flashing several V8+'s in a row then suddenly I was coming off of a simple V6. In the end I put it down to route reading and not being focused enough. Because of that I decided they were things that had to be worked on before the event.

The last day that I climbed for the event was great practice because I managed to fit so much into one day without actually straining myself at all. First of all I spent several hours helping with the route setting at the Tower, it's always great fun route setting seeing what sort of weird and wonderful creations you can come up with. Lately I've managed to get a fair bit of route setting done and during this time I think I've really improved and (hopefully) starting to set some decent climbs! Route setting as a whole has always helped me with route reading, you start to learn the tricks of the trade and think about climbs a lot more so when it comes to actually climbing you feel like you understand what your meant to be doing so much more. After we finished the setting I had a try at a few of the climbs to see if they were alright, but didn't really try too hard because I was going to be competing in the Climbing Stations winter bouldering league the same night!
The bouldering went by very uneventful I managed to flash most the problems, made some silly mistakes and climbed some hard things. It gave me time to think about what I had done in the end and really plan my whole day through for the youth open.

On the day I got warmed up and felt really strong, but most of all calm. I generally struggle to stay calm at events like these, I get nervous and when ever I come of something I get frustrated and cross. That day was not one of those days, I stayed calm and clear headed, because of this managed to climb pretty well! I pulled onto the first climb and flashed it with ease. I eyed up my next problem, Starts on a jug, has an undercutting volume to the right and a big round volume just above. I pulled on, reached to the undercut and realised I was in a horrible position. Whilst reading it I could have sworn the move was a dyno, so I got back to the start hold and jumped. This was a silly mistake and I slipped right of the volume. I had a sit down, looked at it and realised I should have heal hooked the first hold and I would have done it straight away. I got back on and did it. The next problem I got on was up an overhanging wall, it looked pretty steady the only bit that concerned me was right at the end where you have to slap your hands up some aretes to hold yourself in, turns out it was pretty simple moves, just quite powerful but I managed flashed it. There was one problem in the qualifying round which really stood out to me. And I hated it, for one reason. I could not do it... I got on it time and time again getting through all the technical bits at the start which most other people I saw come off at. I was getting to a side pull volume, from there you had a big deadpoint to the finishing hold which was quite flat. But every time I went for the hold I got it and barndoored right off! I just couldn't hold it, and it frustrated me a lot but I was pleased because I got so far on it. In the end I qualified for the finals in 2nd place, we went to isolation and were told we had around an hour and a half before we could view our final problems... For reasons unknown to me we ended up in isolation for a grand total of 5 and a half hours! We only got to view our problems about 4 or so hours into it... Unfortunately this didn't help my focus at all, I lost all my psych and felt pretty scared. After viewing the climbs I felt like I regained some psych but after being trapped in such a small space with about 20 other people I wasn't calm about it... I pulled onto the first climb, a techy one on a slab and flashed it with ease. The next climb I couldn't do, I got to the bonus hold first time and every go after but couldn't make the move just after, I tried all sorts of different foot placements but just couldn't hold myself in. The final climb I didn't do either I got to a big flat hold and from there had to do a big move to quite a flat hold which I just couldn't manage. In the end only one person topped all the finals and the rest of us all got the same score more or less so it went back to our qualifying results! Which meant I finished in 2nd overall.

The next day they had released the names of the people they had selected for the team and unfortunately I didn't make it. I was quite down about this, but in the end I guess it's because I wasn't good enough so I've got to step it up another notch.

I wont go into too much detail about the Christmas Crush, but it was a fantastic bouldering event held at Birmingham Bouldering center. It was a small little center but was pretty cool, it had a nice style of walls. There were 25 qualifying problems and you had about 3 hours to give them all a go. With some fantastic prizes loads of the top climbers showed up and with no junior category just male and female category's I felt out of my depth at first! Luckily I showed up a couple hours before the competition got started so I gave myself plenty of time to read every single problem at least 3 times. And when it actually came to climbing I climbed them all exactly as I read them, flashing nearly everything I climbed! There were only 3 problems I didn't do in the end, but that was enough to put me through to the finals in a solid 2nd place! Right behind Jon Partridge. There where 5 problems in the finals they all looked pretty tough, I started to get worried! But as it turns out I climbed pretty well! I flashed the first three climbs, came off on the last hold of the fourth and got to the same place as almost everyone else on the fifth. It was a fantastic day and I finished in 2nd (AGAIN.)

But what I learnt from the past two weekends has effected me quite a lot in such a small space of time, no matter how good you think you are there can always be someone better. And if you sit down long enough and think over what's been happening you can spot those little details that went wrong and really try to improve on them so next time you can be ready.

HAPPY CLIMBING!

Youth Open Bouldering Results

Christmas Crush Results

European Championships and Battle of Britain

Following my success from the British Speed Climbing Championships about a month ago I was lucky enough to be chosen to take part in the European Speed Climbing Championships in Gemozac.

After a series of rather odd gym sessions I felt physically ready for the event. My main problem though is that living in the Midlands I am no where near the only speed wall in the UK, so I was at quite a big disadvantage and had to make do with watching countless videos of the route and mapping the sequence out in my mind and on paper.

The flight to France and the drive to our hotel was fairly uneventful, we made good time even after following the Sat-Nav sent us down wrong roads several times. When we arrived we all went of to our rooms unpacked and connected to the internet.

Buster finding the internet at the hotel.

Saturday came and everyone went to the wall, having never been to compete abroad before this is quite a strange experience for me. I wasn't to compete in the lead event because I hadn't done well enough to be selected for the team, so I just got to watch and take it all in. The wall was massive, just by looking you could tell it was made for competitions. It had great big intimidating overhangs, spicy looking slabs and many strange shapes. I would have loved to have the opportunity to climb on it just for the experience, but by this point I noticed the speed wall and my focus changed.

Having never watched a European lead event before I didn't know what sort of results to expect from the Team, but seeing Molly (5th) and Alex (7th) qualify and compete in the finals was amazing. It was a fantastic event to watch. But it really got me thinking about what I want to do with my climbing, do I want to focus on the speed climbing? Am I going to continue to push my bouldering so I can attempt to make the new Junior Bouldering Team? Or will I keep pushing my lead climbing so I could compete in an event like this? It sometimes became hard to watch because I know leading is not my strong point but it would have been nice to compete in the event. But watching this event gave me a decision and when we arrived back at our hotel I rang my parents and told them I would not be competing in the Lead Open Youth Event coming this December  because I wanted to push myself as far as I can physically manage in the bouldering event.

Sunday came and it was finally time for me to compete in the speed event. We had two practice attempts at the speed route (Which was only 10m high, not the usual 15m) and I felt like I climbed pretty well, my only problem I felt I had at the time was that I couldn't quite get my technique right while bringing my legs up and this led to a rather painful incident involving my knee and a hold later on...
My first qualifier went alright and I climbed the route in 7.81 seconds, which I later found it averaged out on the full 15m wall would have beaten my current best. My seconds qualifier didn't got too well. On one of the first moves I banged my knee on a hold and stopped moving altogether, this cost me a good 2 seconds. I pushed on up the route and managed about 9 seconds, I never found out for sure because as soon as I got back to the ground I realised my knee was quite a bit worse than I first thought. I limped away and sat down, instantly going dizzy and feeling very faint. I had some antiseptic spray on it then a bandage put on to stop me from getting blood everywhere. Once we got back to the hotel, I took the bandage off and rinsed my leg off in the shower. I was quite disappointing really, because it was so painful when it happened and it completely soaked the bandage in blood. I was hoping for a real war wound! But in the end it turned out to be just a little cut!

The Climbing Center

All in all though it was a good event and I finished 19th, I may have been able to manage better had I not hurt myself but will never know. Next time.

Less than a week after arriving home I decided to travel up to Leeds to compete in the Battle of Britain bouldering competition they hold every year. This was my first time competing in this and I was quite excited about competing with all the big guns in the senior category! It was such a fun event and involved 30 qualifying problems and then the top 5 go into the finals. I scored 267 in the end, flashing all of my problems but one which I got second go then 3 which I just didn't manage. For the problem I did second go I should have done better, I had a poor lapse in judgement and decided to be more dynamic than static which doing the move, this led to me falling and just looking plain stupid. I got on it again not long after, locked off for the crux move and topped it. Easy.
I finished joint 9th in the end. Not bad for one of the youngest competitors in a group of 84! And a massive well done to Molly who won the junior category in qualifying but gave up her title to compete in the senior female finals and finished in an impressive 3rd!
It was a great experience to compete with some of the strongest boulderers around and see what sort of level I need to be at to achieve in future years and I really look forward to when that time comes.

I'd like to say a big well done to Tara Hayes who I train with regularly for come 12th in the Europeans, she was so close and climbed amazingly! And a thank you to the GB Team for letting me compete in the speed event!

I'm hoping to go outside and do some bouldering quite soon with some friends, but if that doesn't happen next up is the final selection for the GB Junior Bouldering Team in December!

Psyched.

British Speed Climbing Championships

I've been a bit reluctant to start a blog, but have finally decided to give it a go with a bit of an epic first post. The timing seemed appropriate as I have just claimed my first major title. Enjoy.

Every time I have an opportunity to climb at the EICA I make sure to dedicate some of my time there on the IFSC Speed Wall. Knowing that over the past few months I had slowly been speeding up every time I practised on the wall I knew I could have a good chance of getting a strong position In the BSCC if I worked for it. So as soon as I heard that the event was coming up I decided to practice for speed climbing, every so often I went up a simple route at my local climbing centre - The Tower.

It took a while, but eventually I managed to speed climb with good technique. Keeping my speed going even after doing big moves such as a dyno. Next I focused on training that I could do every single day without fail, it wasn't much but I decided to increase my leg strength my doing a series of squat jumps. But after a recommendation from my dad I added burpees to the training plan. Finally I had what was possibly one of the most difficult gym session I've ever done (Luckily it only focused on my legs!) Mostly this involved lots of sets of squats whilst holding 40kg weight across my shoulders, there were other exercises but the main plan was that if I could still walk by the end of it I didn't try hard enough. As it turns out, I couldn't walk at the end...

With the BLCC on the 6th and the BSCC on the 7th we had decided to go to Scotland several days early and make a short holiday out of the whole experience. This turned out to be a great idea because it gave me plenty of time to relax and clear my head so I could focus on being in a positive frame of mind for both the events. On the Thursday before the events I traveled to the EICA solely to practice speed climbing.

Unfortunately my mum couldn't quite belay fast enough for me! So I had to change my game plan, I decided to split the route into 4 sections and get my technique as perfect as I could in the short time I had there for each section. After countless practice goes at each sections, filming myself to see what I was doing right and what I was doing wrong, looking at videos of the world records, finding slow motion videos of the climb, etc I decided I couldn't progress any further without being able to try the climb in one whole clean attempt. After asking at the reception if there was anyone available to assist my mum in belaying for an hour or so, we found that the best they could do was get a member of staff for about 15minutes. I had to make do with the short time I was given and as it turned out after 3 attempts at the route I had beaten my previous time and climbed it in a solid 13 seconds! Unfortunately by this point my skin was starting to wear and my belayer had to leave. But that was all okay, because I was confident I could do well in the event.

On the day of the competition I arrived really early to watch my friends compete in the seniors event for the lead climbing. The previous day I had entered the junior lead event and came 6th overall. Not bad but my focus had been mainly on the speed event.

I spent some time warming up with a group of friends jogging, stretching and a bit of easy fun climbing with some big dynamic moves. Just before we started I got to have a quick practice on the speed wall to get a feel for it.

In the qualifying round I posted 2 reasonable times both just over 14 seconds placing me in 3rd place for the quarter final. 

In the quarter finals I improved my time to 13.81 seconds passing me through to the semis in first place

Again in the semis my speed increased to 12.19 seconds qualifying me for the finals in first place. And, as it turned out the fastest time of the day overall and qualifying me for the European Championships next month in France.

The final was a confusing affair. My opponent fell distracting me slightly so I slowed down to make sure I finished... I won!

Its still not quite sunken in that I am the British Junior Speed Climbing Champion. I've been climbing in competitions for 6 years, always trying and hoping to win but never quite getting on the podium at national events (baring this years 2nd place at the YCS).

Next up... Gemozac for the European Championships!

BLCC and BSCC results