Monday 21 March 2011

Winter Comp Season Begins

After a long break, the winter competition season is starting again and the first at Rock Over Manchester on Saturday was a success. With a large turnout including the British Bouldering Team it was sure to be a good comp.

Qualification consisted of many interesting problems including a swinging ball, which apart from the occasional easy problem were all quite hard. I was however pleasantly surprised when I saw Dave Barrans from the British Team fall of a problem that I flashed.

I didn’t make the cut for the final, not that I was expecting to as it is my first year moving into the adult category. However I did manage to just make it into the 7th-12th place playoffs, coming 12th in qualification, which I think was quite good considering I was the youngest to make it in by 4 years.

The playoff was a new thing to me, as I think it was to most of the other climbers. There was one long problem and we had a minute to view it. Scoring was done on who completed it, or if more than one person completed it, it was done on the time it took to complete it. Seen as no one completed the problem, the person who got furthest won.

I didn’t stay to watch the final but Dave Barrans Ended up winning. All in all it was a pretty good day, and I’m looking forward to all the other comps coming up over the winter. 
This picture shows me attempting the playoff problem.

Tout A Blocs 2010

A couple of weeks ago I went down to the French Alps for a holiday with my family, but also to take part in the European Youth Bouldering Championships which took place as part of the Tout A Blocs bouldering competition at L’Argentiere-la-Bessee.
We went down the day before to register, and check out the wall and the problems. The layout was 4 blocs on the main stage, another bloc and an indoor area.


I thought the first qualification round went quite well at first as I did I bit less than half of the problems. Then while waiting on the campsite for the afternoon qualification it started to rain. We went down anyway to see what was happening and we were told to come back the next morning. We came back the next morning and it was still quite wet as there were thunder storms over night. So it was then rescheduled for early that afternoon and the time was reduced to an 1hr 15 minutes from 2hrs. We were then explained the rules by someone who spoke English and we had got it all wrong.

Originally we thought it was like any other bouldering scoring system where you get 10 points for a completed problem, but it was different. Each problem was worth 1000 points and those points where shared between the people that completed that problem. This was frustrating as I had done quite a lot of easy problems in the earlier qualification. So I just decided to try lots of hard problems in the second round and class this completion as a learning experience for next time as I didn’t have enough time to do as many problems as I could have with the full 2hrs.


The second qualification was a bit weird as it rained for about 20 minutes in the middle of it but they didn’t call it off. But I still managed to get one of my hardest problems in the middle of the rain on one of the outdoor blocs. In the end I came 17th out 50 odd competitors which was not bad considering that I didn’t know the rules.

The senior final was pretty awesome, which was held on the main stage in the dark. It was packed with spectators all cheering on the competitors. The problems all had some sort of leap in them which were all very impressive to watch.

 It was a fun competition and it looks good for next year as I will be in the same age group. After the comp I still had another week of holiday to look forward to.

My First Blog - The BBC's 2010

Over the past season I have been training and competing indoors a lot in preparation for the junior BBC’s and the European Youth Bouldering Masters in France this summer. The BBC’s at the weekend was a bit of a mixed bag. I qualified for the final in second place with a score of 87 out of 100, sitting behind a score of 90 from Barnaby Ventham. Seb Smith and Joe Swales who I climb with at Leeds also made it into the final which made it a bit more interesting.

It looked like it was between me and Barnaby based on the qualification scores. There was a significant gap between us and the next place qualifiers. In the final I flashed the first problem along with a few of the other finalists. The second took a few more attempts but got there in the end. The third was a bit more tricky and no one topped it, but I was so close, as I held the last hold but couldn’t hang on to match it. I was the only one to get to the final hold and if I’d held it I would have won. The last problem was on a big overhang, it was tough but a few of us managed to flash it.

Despite making every move in the final, I came out 3rd because I had too many attempts on the second problem. This was a good result but I am a bit disappointed on not getting 1st, as that was my aim for the comp having finished second and third previously. The first place was taken by Edd Mowbray who was the most consistent climber on the problems that were topped. All in all it was a pretty good weekend and I’m still in training for the comp in France in July. After that I hope to get outside a bit more.