Climbing Works Comps

This one for the last few weeks…

So there was this BUCS competition in Sheffield, Climbing Works on February 22^nd. I went there not knowing what to expect. After all, it was uni competition and from  my experience that didn’t mean that it is going to be a really strong comp… But I was nicely surprised.

There were around 400(?) competitors in total. I really didn’t expect that kind of turnout, even for a regular competition that amount would be amazing but for only uni?? That was a huge, wow :) 

So 25 problems (as always in UK) for qualification and I was counting down flashes quite good as I recall only dropped on 23^rd. 24^th from third attempt and on 25^th only got bonus.  Finished with score of 232 and was first from the group 1. So I was pretty sure I got into the finals.

Got in tied in 3rd position. I found out that other finalists didn’t do much better just didn’t drop that silly on 23^rd. I think that made me more confident. It has been a while since I was in the finals so I was really excited, psyched, stoked and all the other fancy words…  I don’t know why, but I didn’t feel any pressure or nor I was nervous, just this excitement was rushing through my blood.

Finals were really weird. You had 5 minutes for only one long circuit board problem and who climbs the furthest – wins. Reasonable, I guess, having in mind that they wanted to save time, the system kind of worked. If only they took at least the half of the circuit board holds that were really in a way and the holds would not have been marked with dark blue tape on dark wall that would be even better. On my first attempt I felt good, even forgot about how tired I was from morning session, and that was my most successful one as well, fell of only few moves away from top. I felt confident that on the next attempt I’ll do it with an ease. But those freaking foot slips… Finished in joint third position. Nevertheless, I had a smile on my face for the rest of the evening. 

The weirdest thing was the crowd… There were maybe 200 students staying for the finals, so naturally I was expecting quite amazing roar during the finals, I was expecting to get that extra power from the crowd and etc… BUT I felt just the same as I would be climbing in the training, expect from the fact that 200 people were staring at you, not even chatting among themselves or anything, just staring. And when someone dropped there would be just a massive ‘uhhhh’ sound and clapping. And the worst part, there wasn’t even music playing. WEEEIRD. I thought: alright, it’s probably just because not most of people from the crowd haven’t been climbing longer than two years and probably haven’t been in competitions. But I was mistaken. Almost exactly the same happened in CWIF, it was boring watching finals in there. I have been in really amazing finals, where after them you might have heart beat hitting over 160 beats per minute and tear rolling down the cheek from amazement. And all of this happening just because  that feeling when every single spectator is screaming his ass off to help the competitors to crush to the top.  But in CWIF if you had the soundtrack of the crowd you would only hear occasional ‘c’mon buddy’ and of course the ‘uhhhh’, moderate cheering when someone tops and clapping (and ‘davai Rustam’ from me). I guess nobody wanted to be too bothered doing that stuff.  Brits…

Thanks to Mackenzie for photo

The climbing in CWIF was really top notch. Very spacious, the queues weren’t too long, none of the problems overlapped and setting was really really high quality. For success in qualification round you had to show all the technique guns you had and as I realized towards the end some endurance wouldn’t disturb your performance as well. Before the competition I felt so confident, so powerful but unfortunately as soon as I started climbing all that was replaced by terrible, awful shake. I shook through maybe 20 (30 boulders in all this time) flashes and when it came to a bit harder problems I just didn’t have any power left from all the hard pushing I had to do in order not to fall from the easy problems. Don’t know which position I finished in. When I saw that I am not even in the first page of the results list I didn’t scroll any lower. 

Now I am really psyched about the next week. Plan is to do some serious Yorkshire bouldering with V-man. Can’t wait!!


 And here is the vid from Fontainebleau trip.