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.