Author Archives: Sean McColl

An Epic Day

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Today has got to be one of the most epic days I’ve had in a long time, and it’s not even over… I doubt anything else too crazy can happen, although that being said I am currently on a train…

My day started like any other, I woke up (slightly early than usual [04:30]) for a 06:00 flight from Toulouse. I bought a ticket to Zurich for the world cup in Innsbruck because it was half the price. From Zurich, I planned on taking the train. I bought everything beforehand, my day was “supposed” to go 6am flight from Toulouse-Paris. 10:20 flight from Paris-Zurich, and finish with a train ride at 14:40 Zurich-Innsbruck. I knew it was going to be a full day, but I had my computer, I knew there were outlets everywhere, and I just recently downloaded a few HD movies for me to peruse on the journey.

As I mentioned earlier, my day started off nicely, woke up, got to the airport in 5 minutes and got all my stuff together. I guess the first thing that bugged me is going through the security. On my carry-on, I had my computer (and accessories), my climbing shoes (just in case) and my new D7000 camera, which I wanted to test out at the world cup. I took out my computer, placed it in their trays, start walking, and the TSA agent or whatever starts man handling my bag, turning it pretty heavily. I calmly say (in near perfect French) “be careful, it’s very fragile” (camera inside…). She looks at me like I’m speaking a different language, and asks me why she has to be careful. I say there’s a camera inside and she snaps that it must come out of the bag. Ok fine, whatever, it comes out, and she vaguely motions for the next person. Awesome start.

I shake it off, text Mathilde, tweet a few times how ridiculous those security guards can be, and continue with my adventure. The flight was normal, a little croissant, coffee, short nap, and voila I’m in Paris. I hustle to the shuttle that brings me across gates even though I know I have 2 and a half hours until my next flight. I get to the hall, pass security again and see that I have a good 2 hours before they even say what gate it’s at. I roam the duty free like I always do in airport before checking to see if there’s Wi-Fi. There’s an Orange partner for the Wi-Fi, which means that through my French phone, I’d be able to connect. With the 1.5 hours I had until my scheduled 10:20 departure, I broke out my whole computer setup. Computer, mouse pad, mouse, charger, headphones. I was ready. My cousin Gary Lee was online and Diablo III just got released. After testing the internet speed at CDG Airport, it was an astonishing 70MBPS. For those who aren’t computer savvy, that’s REALLY FAST.

I went online, bought Diablo III, and spent the next hour and a half playing it. Awesome! At around 10:00, I packed up and waited for my gate to be announced. 5 minutes, 10 minutes, 20 minutes… and then a message that everyone dreads appears next to the flight… delayed. Delayed until 12:20… HAHA. Delayed 2 hours, speechless. I kind of chuckled as 2 hours is a pretty big delay. 20 minutes is nothing, even 45, but 2 hours… all you can do is laugh. I also knew I’d have to wait in Zurich for my train, so I didn’t care too much. I then whipped out my computer setup and spent the next hour and a half playing D3 again… An hour and a half later, the gate came on, although we waited in the airplane for like 45 minutes and we finally took off at 12:55… Not bad!

An hour and somewhat later, we landed in Zurich, and that’s when thing’s started to get spicy. It was 14:05 when I left the plane, and with my train at 14:40, and a short train ride from the airport to Zurich Main Station, it was going to be tight. I quickly went to baggage claim and waited as everyone does for the stupid tram to start working. 14:15… and a message in German comes on. I can vaguely understand enough German to know that it didn’t sound good, and when the guy next to me sighed, turned around and started walking away, I knew it was bad news. The next announcement was in English, and I understood why he has sighed. “We are sorry to inform the people arriving from Paris CDG that none of the luggage was loaded on the plane. Please come to customer service to fill out a form”. Because all of the German speaking people were already walking towards customer service, I was probably 20th in line after doing a short jog to jockey for position. 20th in line meant a 30 minute wait, and a missed train. As soon as I started lining up, I knew I’d probably miss my train. It was 15:00 by the time I finished up and because I’m heading straight to Innsbruck, they’ll try to send it there. The problem with sending my bag to Innsbruck is there are no direct flights from Zurich, so my bag will have to go through Vienna… It won’t arrive until the EARLIEST tomorrow sometime, so hopefully I have it by tomorrow night (fingers crossed).

I’d like to pause a second from this epic adventure and thank Murphy for his law and for nothing bending me over. Before I left on my trip, I was packing my bag, and I always pack my climbing shoes on carry on, because you never know when they’re going to lose your bag. I’ve only ever not packed my shoes in my carry on while going to Hueco once, and they lost my bag… (Murphy’s Law). I almost did it a second time last night, but thought better of it. Thank goodness… I chuckled to myself while waiting in line, that I safely had my competition Solutions just behind my lower back. I’ll have to borrow some shorts, chalk, and a make-shift Canada t-shirt, but none of that compares to having to borrow climbing shoes…

When I got to the main train station in Zurich, I went straight to the departure board, and looked for the next train to Innsbruck. As I vaguely remembered, it was 2 hours after, and it was. Another one left at 16:40, and got in 2 hours later as well. I had an hour and a bit, so I bought some food from the nearby MIGROS and went Starbucks hunting. I knew where there was one very close to the station and headed straight for it. After another misspelled Starbucks cup (Shean) and a 7.80 CHF americano, I was sitting in a comfy chair, sipping coffee with free Wi-Fi again… As I sat there thinking about my day, I wondered what else would happen. I decided to blog about it, and if you’d made it this far, good job! I did internet stuff for a while, and then walked back to the station. It’s kind of nice to just walk around with a small backpack.

Did I also mention that the customer service gave me a “toilet pack”. It’s pretty nice, toothbrush, mouthwash, little towel, a white t-shirt (for tomorrow). Also, thank goodness I have my computer… what would I do without it… haha. So I’m now on the train from Zurich, it’s been about 2 hours without incident which is nice. I’ll get to Innsbruck in a few hours, go to the Mammut festival, which I’ll pretty much miss now, and call it a day… That’s it for now; check back in a few days for how the REAL part of my weekend went, aka World Cup Innsbruck!

Training weekend in Oloron

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This past weekend, Mathilde and I decided to drive out to Oloron-Saint-Marie to climb on their big wall. The wall is 20m and has a bunch of hard routes from the “24 Heures Du Mur” competition they had last October. I wrote up a post about that competition which can be found HERE.

Mathilde wrote up a good post and I’m just going to link to it rather than typing it again. It’s in French although she added the Google translator in her sidebar. Let me know if anything’s unclear and I can explain it! If you haven’t clicked on the link, you can click HERE. She just started the website and it can be found at http://mathildebecerra.com

Vienna World Cup 2012

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I am once again back in my apartment in Toulouse, France after 5 weeks of competition. It’s been an adventure and I’ve come back to Toulouse for some more training until the next world cup which comes up in a mere 3 weeks. The next world cup is on the May 18-19th weekend in Innsbruck, Austria. As mentioned before, I competed in 5 different competitions in 4 different competitions in 5 weeks. Yes it’s a lot, and I’m pretty tired. I’ve already been back to the gym once for training and it felt good. I’m a bit sore in my shoulder, specifically my right from Log-Dragomer.

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After my last post, I headed to Zurich for a photo-shoot with Mammut. It`s kind of a “secret” for what we were working on, although Stefan Schlumpf (the photographer) released a sort of teaser photo which is just below.

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Yes, I look a bit scary, although can’t we just imagine that I’m sort of superhero? If you’re wondering if I’m wearing a bit of make-up, the answer is yes… 30 minutes of it, and touch-ups here and there :) . We worked on a couple shots with this sort of persona, and then another one for the Mammut one. It was a fun time and my first real photo-shoot in a studio. It’s actually a lot more work than I gave credit for. The photographer has something in mind and if you don’t get it 1st, 2nd, 40th try, you shoot again…

I was busy doing this for a day just before I left for Vienna. Thursday morning, I took the train to Vienna with Jorg Verhoeven and Nikki De-Leeuw from The Netherlands. It was a pretty easy train ride, and before we knew it, we were taking another couple trains to the hotel. Once in Vienna, I met up with the engaged Alex Puccio and Chris Webb-Parsons from the USA and Australia respectively. Rules meeting… blah blah, sleep.

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Friday morning was men’s qualifiers and it went pretty well. I did 4 boulders in 5 tries with 5 bonuses in 7. I secured a 6th place position heading into semi-finals. It turns out that for my group, you had to do 4 problems in 7 tries or less…. close. In the other group, it was even closer, and you had to do 3 problems flash or more. The problems in Vienna were actually pretty cool as they made the two groups on almost identical problems. Two of the 5 problems were 99% identical, and I say 99% because 100% is impossible. The other 3 problems were all pretty similar moves, just in different angles. It was pretty cool to see and I find they did a good job. They did the same thing for the women, and after knowing their style from the men, again it was pretty cool to see.

Saturday were semis and finals, with semis passing in the morning. By 8:30, I think I was back in isolation with Alex Puccio. She had a somewhat bad qualifiers and hasn’t felt so good ever since being a bit sick in China. I tried to tell her that she looked strong and would do fine. I believed it too! I hoped she climbed like I knew she could and just crushed the semis. I came out after a standard warm-up and was feeling super good. I felt good in my warm up, and looked at the first problem with eager fingers. The first one had all massive holds on it, and looked like a hard top. I fell a couple of times before the bonus, trying to figure out where to grab it. I finally ended up crossing to the bonus on my last try but falling on the last move, tickling the final “sloper, pinch”. It turned out that if I’d have stuck that last move, I could’ve just packed up my stuff and waited to finals. I didn’t know that and didn’t do the problem so I continued. The rest of the semis can be summed up in two words…. TOO HARD. Only half of the semi-finalists grabbed zone on the second problem and one lone competitor from France (Jeremy Bonder) managed to do the seeming impossible slab. I got 3 bonuses in 5 tries although I couldn’t get bonus on number 2. It turned out that all you had to do was put one finger on the zone “volume” to get credit for the hold.

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You may ask why I wouldn’t have known that, being a world cup competitor. Well the thing is that I’ve done that exact thing, one finger on the hold, and they didn’t give it to me (Vail 2011). I locked off, touched the hold with one finger for the 3 seconds, came down and then fell. They said I wasn’t in control of the hold…. I appealed…. and lost. I figured this was the same thing… although it wasn’t…. so the IFSC rules still bug me a bit. I could write many thousands words on this matter so I’ll leave it at that.

I finished in 9th place, in which I was pretty happy. If I would’ve lifted my middle finger while hugging the volume on 2 and touched the bonus volume on the bottom, I would’ve been in finals…. That’s just part of the game, and I lost this round. Oh well, I still came 9th :)

I went out for lunch with the Austrians after that, and then figured out where to stay that night. Because some of the French team was going to be on the same flight as me back to Toulouse, I crashed with them. After a few pre-finals drinks, we were back watching finals, and the route setters made up for their poor performance in the semis. On the men’s side, all 4 problems were done, and the winner, Rustam Gelmanov did all 4. Second place went to the other strong Russian Dmitrii Sharafutdinov. Third place was secured by none other than the Austrian superstar Kilian Fischhuber. On another note, one of my French friends Jeremy Bonder made his first finals and although still managing to do 2 finals problems, he finished 6th! Full results for men can be found HERE.

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On the women’s side, it was also a great finals with Akiyo Noguchi taking it down by being the only women to top all 4 problems. Mina Markovic of Slovenia did 3 problems are took second. American Alex Puccio flashed two finals problems and took 3rd. It was a great finals followed by dinner and some festivities! Full results for womens can be found HERE.

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As I said before, training is back in full swing for me, and I’m still stoked for boulder World Cups. I leave May 17th for Innsbruck!