Thursday 20 December 2012

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