Monday April 14, 2008
This past week was my first week of work. It's been exactly what I have been wanting to do...it's full of challenges and I so far I'm enjoying the team I'm working with. By the time Mike turned up from Utah, I was stretched thin with work, training and him. I treated us to a hotel, which gave me a break from the van for a bit. Unfortunately, by the end of the week, I started feeling sick and my new life started bearing down on me, tiring me out too soon. I had planned to compete in a competition that weekend and started wondering if that was a smart thing to do. The flu (as it turns out) held off through most of the weekend but hit me hard today. Talk about luck! I was able to participate in the comp and I'm really happy I did!
I haven't been competing while traveling so I am a
bit
out of touch with indoor holds let alone route
reading. It's like a whole other world! I
mentally figured I wouldn't do well in the comp (it
was a strong field, too!) so I didn't put too much
emphasis on anything but making finals. Well, the
format is judged on zones and while I was one of two
to make all 5 zones, it didn't matter because the
one problem I topped took me 2 tries while others
flashed it. It was luck that they were taking 10
women to finals so by placing 9th, I just barely
made the cut.
The competition was the Canadian Western Regionals, part of the Tour de Bloc series. The Hangout Indoor Climbing Centre in Richmond, BC hosted the event. There weren't as many people as I expected signed up. In fact, there were zero women in the Advanced category, which surprised me. There were 14 women in open, which I thought was a good number, despite the rule to take 10 to finals.
The qualifying zone format was familiar to me, as was the isolation and 5 minute per route circuit. For finals, however, they kept the zone judging system but changed isolation a bit and added a dedicated all team preview prior to climbing. It worked like this: all of the men would go out and all of the women would go out in two groups. They would be directed to their respective problems and given 2 minutes to preview the problem before being sent back into isolation 1. There was a 2nd isolation for after your attempt on the problem so you wouldn't potentially disclose information to the other competitors who had yet to climb.
After previewing the route, everyone would go back to isolation and the first 2 competitors would get ready. In this case, that would be me and another girl. When it was your turn to climb, you had 4 minutes and a 1 minute warning. The good thing about this format was that you could rest until the very last second and then jump on the problem and get a chance to complete it (you would be done the moment you came off the wall). In the other format of 5 minutes a problem, you would have had to come off the wall mid-attempt.
Now, back in isolation, the 2nd person to climb would be waiting for person #1 to return. If the person succeeded in topping out the problem on their first attempt, then the 2nd person would head out right away. Otherwise, you would wait until the person topped the problem, gave up or their time ran out. This just meant the person on deck had to be ready for anything. It also meant, you knew if the other person flashed the route or not. I didn't have a huge mental stake in the competition so I wasn't overly concerned about that part. Still, when it came to the last problem in finals and I was on the finish hold on my flash attempt, I wanted very desperately to clinch the flash. I didn't. You had to establish with both hands and the awkward match meant I came off the wall before clearly establishing (my right hand was solid, but it didn't count). I finished 8th, but I felt I climbed well, especially since I hadn't expected to climb strong (being sick and all). If I had flashed the problem, I could easily have moved up some spots.
Hats off to the setters, too. I know a lot of time and energy goes into trying to create good problems for us competitors and it's tough, especially when you have really strong men setting for really strong women. Fortunately, and no offense guys, Mike (my mike) was hanging around and offered to run some of the problems and to help adjust them if necessary. Not only does he have a lot of route setting experience, he has a really good feel for setting for women. The problems themselves were stellar (a bit tricky and a touch too hard in general, qualifiers in particular), but I had a lot of fun and the tweaks and adjustments in finals made those routes particularly engaging.
I was really happy to learn Katie Mah, one of the jrs from the Edge Climbing Gym, took 2nd. Vikki, reigning champion of these comps, came 3rd. Something happened on her fourth problem that she didn't make the bonus hold. :( I think had she done that, she might have won the comp.
For the guys, Sean McColl dominated, as usual. :)
Now that I am back in Seattle, I am down with the flu, again, for the 3rd time this spring. :( not fun! And, Jtree is only days away...argh!
