Seattle Bouldering Challenge was this past weekend.  I drove down with my dad Saturday morning to Seattle.  My mom had gone down on Friday to do some shopping and we picked her up from downtown along with Elise Sethna and her mom as well.  By 10:30, we had arrived at the competition and waited around for the rules meeting.  At 11, the comp started and I went about my usual routine.  SBC is a scramble competition format and they take your top 5 boulders.  I usually warm up a bit, then test the waters and try a few hard ones.  I kind of hurt my arm a week and a half ago from overtraining.  I was afraid of my arm hurting at the competition so I wanted to get qualifiers down as fast as I could.  About halfway through, I was getting nervous because I had fallen on quite a few boulders that I thought I should’ve done.  One of them was a really dumb mistake; I missed a hold on one of the problems and tried to dyno around the lip…  With about an hour left in the competition, Jamie Chong and I were looking at the two hardest problems.  They were both about 15-20 moves long and pretty overhanging.  I tried one of them and got slayed on the second move.  After a quick rest, I tried the other hard one and ended up flashing it.  Because it was worth the most points of all the qualifying boulders, I knew I had secured a spot in finals, so I stopped.

Haircut?

After the dust settled from the qualifying round, Johnny Goicoechea was leading in first place.  He had also done the hardest problem as well as one of the sloper problems that I couldn’t do.  Finals started at 6 and I had a little trick up my sleeve.  For the past 8 months, I haven’t cut my hair.  I always cut my hair right before I go to Europe which was back in April.  I figured because it was getting cold here in Vancouver, I would just leave my hair long and stay warm.  Finally, my hair got so annoying being in my eyes all the time, I decided to cut it.  I also wanted to do something ridiculous for SBC finals because I know it would get me psyched.  Because I wasn’t feeling 100% with my shoulders, I knew if I looked ridiculous, I would try all that much harder.  During the layover before finals, I had my mom cut my hair in a park.  The catch was that I cut my hair into a raging Mullet.  I thought it’d be funny and I think it was well received.  I competed in finals with the mullet and had nothing but complements on my new style.

Finals

I ended up climbing super well on all the finals problems except for one, the first one.  When I left isolation, I was told that all the men would be on Lime Green taped problems and all the women’s would be in Bright Pink taped problems.  I got out to my first finals boulder and it was pretty long.  Because I was really psyched to climb, after a short preview, I jumped on.  Halfway through the boulder, I looked up and saw a huge lime green hold.  Because I knew I was on a Lime Green boulder, I naturally grabbed it.  Right after I grabbed it, I heard a gasp from my mom who was watching from the side.  She said “Sean…” and I looked over, kind of surprised that she was trying to talk to me in the middle of a comp.  I looked back up towards the problem and immediately knew what I had done wrong.  Because my mind was so tuned into the colour “Lime Green”, I hadn’t noticed that the hold that I was on was boxed in Pink tape and just happened to be exactly the same colour as the route I was supposed to be on.  I jumped down and felt pretty dumb.  I think that’s the first time I’ve ever gone off route in a competition.  I take competitions pretty seriously, and this was very uncommon for me.  After a quick rest, I jumped on the problem and fired it second go.

The rest of the boulders in finals were super good.  I was lucky in the fact that boulder 3 and boulder 4 were very hard.  I knew that if the boulders were too easy, the 100 point bonus for flashing that I lost on the first boulder would come back to bite me.  Because I knew I was behind, I think I tried even harder.  The third boulder suited me well.  I had some jumping, some campusing, heel hooks and a final throw to the top rail.  Because I was the first person to top the boulder, the crowd erupted as I stuck the final jug.  I realized after that if I’d had fallen on the last move, I would’ve gone for a pretty big fall down into the crowd…

First and second place came down to the 4^th problem.  Johnny beat me in qualifiers so in a count back, he’d beat me.  Because I flashed the 3^rd problem and Johnny had flashed the first, we were almost tied going into the last problem.  I knew that if Johnny stuck the move that I had fallen on, he’d win.  His first try was probably his best try and he was way closer to sticking the move than I was.  Because the problems were so long, by the time he got to the crux move, he said he was too pumped.  After a very entertaining finals, I managed to pull out another win, Johnny was second and Brian Boyko took third spot.

Welcome back to the conclusion of my adventure in China. If you haven’t already read the first part of this post, I highly recomment it. Enjoy!

I’ve also just uploaded the best 24 photos that my dad took in China. You can check them out in the photo gallery!

Day 7 (July 4th)

Again I got up at 6:20 and stumbled into the bathroom to have my shower. This was the 4th time I had done it and I was pretty used to it. I turned on the shower to see that no water was flowing. A second later, my dad came back into the room and said the water wasn’t on. He had woken up 20 minutes earlier to a similar event. He had asked the hotel workers and they said something about the cold water not being on until 7am. THATS RIDICULOUS. How can you not have running water to the hotel rooms. On top of that, I always have a shower on comp mornings. It wakes me up and gets me ready for the day. I guess today would have to be different. So, on the most important day of the event for me, I don’t get a shower. I barely had time to grab a coffee before the bus left 10 minutes early for the competition. Once I got to the competition, I had had time to think things over. It didn’t matter that there was no shower, it was just another story I could tell when it was all over.

This day was schedule to be the semi finals and finals for mens bouldering as well as both rounds for women lead. For bouldering, I was psyched to see that our boulders would be on the good walls that they had made for the comp, not in isolation like in qualifyers. I did my first two problems pretty easily, they were hard but I was climbing well and I felt good. The third problem was really hard. I thought you had to hand jam between two volumes and mantle up but after I was done climbing, I saw there was a much easier way. Even so, I managed to get halfway through the boulder but fell twice trying to hit the bonus. I went into problem 4 having 2 tops in 3 tries. Problem 4 was one of the weirdest problems I had ever seen. There was a bunch of starting holds, then you had to traverse on just the friction of the wall, then do some sort of weird mantle to finish. Sadly, I took all the pictures on my dad’s camera, which is at home now but I’ll try to talk to him and get him to upload some pictures onto the site. I managed to do the bouder on my second attemp. I think during my redpoint attempt, I was climbing for almost 2 minutes. The problem was really subtle and you just had to figure out where to place your body so you wouldn’t fall backwards. I finished semis with 3 tops in 5 tries. To my amazement, I had enough for finals. I was so psyched to be in finals after only making finals once out of 3 world cups this year.

Finals Bouldering

Finals were pretty upsetting. I didn’t feel tired but after it was over, people were saying that I didn’t looke my usual strong self. Since it was my 4th day competing, I was probably getting tired. The first two problems of finals were way too easy. Almost every flashed the first one, just me and Killian slipped on one of the first couple of moves then sent it second go. I think all 6 finalists flashed the second boulder, which wasn’t harder than 7B (V7). The competition ended up coming down to the third boulder. The third boulder was another type of dyno to a mantle. The secret was getting a kneebar or a double kneebar, if you saw it, the boulder was painfully easily. I did not find the knee bar until my last attemp with time expired and when I went to do the move, my knee bar slipped and I fell. One of my friends tried the boulder in his street shoes just after finals and the first time he got to the mante part with the knee bars, send the problem in runners… The 4th problem was equally dissapointing with another 7B (V7). I flashed it easily, as did most others. I finished finals with 3 tops in 4 tries out of 4 problems. Usually you win or come second with that kind of record but I finished last. I can’t complain about my climbing, I felt like I climbed well even if I was feeling tired. I have to say that if the problems would’ve been as hard as they were supposed to, the results could have been different.

Day 8 (July 5th)

I’d like to start this day by saying Happy Birthday to my brother Jason McColl who turned 24 today!

I woke up at 6:20 like normal and yes, the water was running. This day was all of mens lead and all of womens bouldering. Since I had qualified so high on the first day, I was going 3rd last in this round. After observation, I knew I’d have probably at least 2 hours before going out and climbing. The semis route looked great, again, it went almost straight up. It looked a bit bouldery at the bottom and cruxy through the roof. Nothing out of the ordinary happened before I went out to climb and when I was waiting to go out and climb I was really excited. I figured this was my last route of the whole competition and if i ended up making finals, hey I made finals in both! I climbed my semi final super well and ended up making to the last 10 moves. When I got down, I though that it wasn’t going to be enough for finals but Jacob came running over and said I was sitting around 4th. With only 2 climbers after me, I was guaranteed finals. I quickly ran over to the warmup wall to cooldown from the heinus pump that I had. Finals were something different. After 5 full days of competition, I was really started to feel it. For my warmup before finals, I think i got pumped once, then I was good. After preview, I was psyched again, the route looked super hard the whole way up but at least it went straight up with a bit of sideways climbing in the roof and then on the last headwall. My goal was to make it to at least the last headwall, I know it’s possible and I figured if I climbed super well, maybe I could even win! I was the third climber out so after preview I went and got my stuff. I could see by the crowd and where the first two got lowered that they had gotton the last headwall but hadn’t done the route. While I was climbing, I felt good, but tired. By halfway, I was pumped and I knew I didn’t have the fitness to stop and rest. I climbed quickly through the whole bottom section and made a huge error going into the roof. I spent most of the preview looking at a weird move in the middle to a big blue sloper. We quickly decided you must go to it with right hand because crossing would be too hard. I figured only if the right hand was really good, I wouldn’t cross. Well, when I got there while I was climbing, I was already a bit pumped and the right hand felt pretty good so I crossed. It was such a hard move the way I had done it and to get out of it was even harder. I had to hike up my feet and do a super hard match. I clipped the draw and kept going. This hold was where most of the competitors in finals rested for a bit but I just kept on truckin’. 3 move later, I was ready to fall. I was climbing on adreneline now, I just kept saying one more move, one more move. My hands kept grabbing pretty good holds so I wasn’t falling. After doing about 5 moves like this, my arms couldn’t bend; I jumped more away from the wall than up when I tried to tag the next hold but either way, I was sailing downwards. That was it, I no more climbs to do. I asked Jacob who was near if I had beaten any of the first two and he replied no… I thought, oh no, I’m going to come last place in both finals… After I climbed, another Japanese climbers did the same stupid sequence in the middle but slipped off when the move was too hard. Cédric Lachat fell a few moves below me when he mis read the sequence and gased out. Finally a climber from Ukraine fell moves before me to land me in a 5th place finish.

Aftermath

That was the whole competition, a 6th place finish in Bouldering and 5th place finish in Lead. I had accomplished my goals and passed them. I thought it was a dream to make finals in both but in the end I had done it. Maybe one day, I’ll be able to win in both… haha or maybe all 3… Because of my double finals placing, it turns out that I had won the overall ranking. It came down to a battle between Cédric and me and in lead, he had to beat me by a few positions. Since I had beaten him, I had secured my overall victory. There was a ceremony and everything for it. For the first time in history, the Canadian Anthem was played at World Championships in Climbing. Also, this was the first year that they gave money for the overall rankings. I think they might have given money just because it was in China but I guess we’ll see in 2 years when the World Championships moves to Arco, Italy. I can tell anyone wondering that it is extremely hard to compete in both events. It’s even harder if you make finals in both. Your body gets more tired every day. I had to wake up at 6:20 for 5 out of the 6 days of the competition. The only other competitor to make finals in both events was Akiyo Noguchi. Most people could tell just by watching her in semi and finals bouldering that she looked really tired. She had won the World Cup 2009 rankings for Bouldering but during the finals, it looked like she could barely lock off. She had come 8th the day before in Lead and at the end of Bouldering, she finished 6th. She also won the womens overall! On top of trying to climb almost every day, when you’re competing here, you don’t eat a lot. For the semi and finals day, I barely ate at all. My stomach hurt so much at some parts and I would have to go to the bathroom every 15 minutes. I didn’t eat because I was afraid of getting even sicker. I ate what I needed to have enough energy to climb and thats about it. After it was all said and done, I’m obviously glad I competed in both events and I will probably do the same thing for every other World Championships I go to.

Day 9+10 (July 6th-7th)

My flight out of Xining left at 21:00 and I spent a short night in Beijing with my dad. The next morning we took a cab back out to the airport and I continued my journey home. My flight from Beijing went to Amsterdam where I waited almost 5 hours in the airport before catching my last flight back to Toulouse. I landed in Toulouse on July 7th at around 22:30. After almost another 2 days of travelling, I was finally done. I met my girl in the airport and she could tell that I had lost weight. Because of not eating and being sick, I had lost 3-4kg’s (6-7lbs). It took me a couple of days for my stomach to finally settle down and now I think it’s almost back to normal. Well thats the end of my adventure in China, I hope you enjoyed reading my experience!

Day 1+2 (June 28th-29th)

World Championships were quite different this year than they have been in the past. This was the first year that they were held outside of Europe. This year they were held in Qinghai, China. This is more of an adventure than a blog post, why don’t you come along for the ride.

I left Toulouse on June 28th at 15:00 on a flight to Paris, my flight from Paris left at around 20:00 and after a 5 hour layover in Beijing, I had arrived in Qinghai a whole day later at about 21:00. I had been travelling for about 30 hours but I felt pretty good. I was a little skeptical about the travel arrangments from the airport but when I saw that the whole Spanish team was on the same flight, I was relieved. When we got there, they were waiting with a big yellow sign that said 10th Climbing World Championships. After the hour long bus ride, we started checking into our hotel. By 22:30

I had gotton to my room which I was sharing with Daniel Woods who had gotton there the day before. When I walked around the room, it seemed pretty normal, there were 3 individual beds, (one for my father who was coming) a TV, a Balcony and even little plasic sandals to wear about the room. It wasn’t the cleanest room but I was getting the room covered by the Pan American Council. I was pretty happy until I saw the bathroom. I’ve seen some pretty bad bathrooms in my travels but this one definately topped it. This bathroom had no real toilet, just a hole in the floor with two places to squat down on top of it. I’ve used squatting toilets and usually it’s not bad for a day or so but for a whole week! On top of that, the shower was right above the (toilet) and it used the hole for the toilet to drain into. So sometimes when you’re having a shower, the smell of the toilet wafts up… Not cool.

Day 3 (June 30th)

The first day of the competition started at 8am. Where we were staying was about 45 minutes by bus, which we had to make twice a day. I woke up at 6:20 to shower, eat breakfast and catch the bus. The showers were terrible at best… they just drizzled water, the only good thing that it was indeed hot water. On the other hand, the competitions venue was incredible. I didn’t get to look at it fully until after qualifyers but they had a huge boulder wall mounted on a stage so it was easier to see. Just to the left, they had a giant speed wall that could fit 4 standard routes. To finish it off, to the left of that, they a very impressive lead wall with at 20 volumes on it. I got to isolation at 7:45 and looked at the running orders. I forget what time I was supposed to go out but qualifyers went pretty well. It turns out that they had a temporary isolation just for the first day because our qualifyers were on the real isolation wall. I flashed the first 3 problems and I was really psyched. The 4th problem really threw me off; I couldn’t touch the second move. I finished my 5 minutes after trying the first move 7 times. I took a couple deep breaths, took my rest and did the 5th problem second go. In total for qualifyers I had 4 tops in 5 tries. After everyone had gone, I was sitting in 11th. Daniel finished just in front of me with 4 tops in 4 tries in 10th.

Day 4 (July 1st)

The second day of the competition was another rest day for a lot of the competitors. For me, it was not. Since I was registered in the overall ranking, I had to at least compete once in the 10m speed. The one thing that they changed this year is that they made the overall rankings based on the 10m-speed route and not the 15m. As you may or may not know, they know have a stardard speed route. At every world cup, it’ll be the same route with the same hand and foot holds. I had to do a semi warm-up and do the route once. I did the 10m-speed route in 8.5 seconds, which put me in 43rd. Not my best result in Speed climbing but it was my first trying trying the standard route and to succeed in speed, you HAVE to train the route. By the end of the day, the fastest time up the 10m route was 4.22 seconds. At the end of the day, I got the startlist for lead climbing and went back to the hotel.

Day 5 (July 2nd)

This day was dedicated to lead qualifyers. Since it was flash format, they had the routes up since the first day. On the wall, they had all 4 routes up at the same time and they planned to run them all simultaneously. In the men, there were about 85 competitors and for the women, about 65. I was 30th on the first route and 72nd on the second. For the demo, instead of actually climbing the routes, they had recorded the climbers a few days ago and they replayed them all on TV’s. It was a bit strange to watch a forerunner on TV because it wasn’t just beside the wall so you couldn’t look back and forth. Since I wasn’t one of the firsts, it didn’t matter because I’d probably see the route done at least a few times before I had to cilmb. Qualifyers took a huge amount of time. I think I climbed my first route after almost 3 hours of competition and I didn’t climb my second until after 6 hours of waiting. I ended up topping out both my routes but I don’t think I would’ve done my second one if it weren’t flash. Just before my second route, something happened that I was super pissed about. I knew Jorg was just starting to climb, and I knew that I was 3 climbers after him so I was probably going to be climbing in about 20 minutes. I was just getting my stuff ready when I hear over the loud speaker, Sean McColl, last call. When I heard this, I though maybe Jorg slipped and the two people after him had gotton injured or were choosing not to climb so I ran over pretty scared that I was going to miss my turn. When I got there, I saw that Jorg was still climbing and the two after him were just chilling. I turned around and almost lost it on the guy that had done it. He was chuckling and telling someone else that that was the fastest way to get a competitor. I told him in the nicest voice I could muster that it was completely unnaceptable to say last call unless I’m the next person in line and I’m about to miss my turn. I quickly thought about other things and got in the mind set for my second qualifyer.

In my opinion, the flash works really well because climbers aren’t stuck in isolation for 7 hours but there are a lot of other competitors that dislike the format saying that it’s unfair to the competitors that have to climb the routes first. I agree with their point of view but since the startlist is random I still agree with the flash format. This year, all the world cups were given a choice of flash or onsight qualifyers. Next year, they will re-evaluate and force one or the other. Since there was a really awkward move at the top of both routes, there were a lot of strong climbers that fell on one or the other. Along with me, there were about 9 others that topped both routes and there were about 10 that had fallen at the crux move on the top of one of the routes. With 26 going to semis, all the favourites made it through. Another thing that I liked about the routes is that they went straight up. The routes were max 40 moves, which meant they were going to be hard, not long. Since I spend most of the year bouldering, I look forward to walls like this. I know that since there will never be a move on a route thats harder than in bouldering, it’ll just be the endurance that will make me fall. On short routes like this, I sprint where I’m comfortable and I should be able to do pretty well.

Day 6 (July 3rd)

This day was the ‘rest’ day in the program. I think it’s the first World Championships where they dedicated a whole day to rest but for someone like me who made semis in both categories, this rest day was much needed. By now in the competition, I was already so happy. Two years ago at World Championships in Aviles, I didn’t make semis in either. I came really close in bouldering and just blew the sequence on the last boulder. It turned out that the stupid tries I spent on the last boulder cost me semi finals. In lead, I slipped off in the roof on my first qualifyer and topped my second route. My position on the first route was so bad that I ended up in the 40’s. I think that the only thing that happened on this day was the qualification for the 15m speed climbing for men or something like that. Since I didn’t have to go to the competition, I went to a local shopping centre to look around. Also, this was the day I started to get a bit sick.

Since the beginning of the competition, there had been numerous people that had been getting sick. Many people thought that it was the food and others thought it was the water. All the athletes were staying at the same hotel. It was in fact a National Olympic Training Base. All the athletes got meal tickets for the same restaurant in the base. We were supposed to eat there in the morning, they would bring food for us in the day, and we were supposed to eat dinner there at night. I think it might have been how there were preparing because health standards in China I’m sure are different that in other parts of the world. By the end of the competition there were 70 athletes out of 200 that had fallen sick. To me, this is very unnaceptable. You can’t offer occomodation at a hotel where they’re making almost half of their athletes sick. After this day, we started eating rarely at the restaurant, only going there in the morning for coffee. Some people in the IFSC started getting mad about the competitors complaining but I think that everyone should know. Alex Johnson from the American team posted a picture of our bathroom on our facebook. It just showed that the shower was just above the toilet, which was just a hole. Within a day, someone from the IFSC had contacted USA Climbing who contacted Alex’s mom who took the picture down. They said something along the lines of being a discrace to the federation in China. I think thats just BS and now we are determined to tell everyone. If everyone got sick in the hotel, people deserve to know. If the bathroom is disguesting and shitty, then people should know that too. Yes, on the other hand, the competiton venue is amazing but you can’t just show the best parts of the comp and ignore the failures. Thats like have an Open House and only showing 3 of the 7 rooms because the other 4 are broken and dirty. That aside, it was time to get psyched for semi finals in bouldering tommorrow.

I’ve decided to cut this blog post into two different parts because it’s already ridiculously long and there’s another 2000 words already written. I’ll have part 2 of the post up shortly!

Well another World Cup has come and passed. This one was in Hall, Austria. Hall is about 10km just outside of Innsbruck. The competition started with 78 men and 46 women. Because there were so many people registered in the competition, the organizers decided to run the climbers on two different sets of problems. They split the competitors in two different groups and ran them on different 5 qualifying problems. Some might argue that this is unfair because the best climbers could be in one group and it a way, they´re right. Although, the way they split the climbers is based on their WorldRanking, so every second person based on their WorldRanking would go in a group. If all the top 10 climbers were there 1, 3, 5, 7, and 9 would be in one group and 2, 4, 6, 8, and 10 would be in the other. All in all, they assume all the strong climbers will make it through to semi finals where the problems are usually a lot harder.

I had a World Ranking of 11 because of my competitions last year and the fact that I didn´t go to the world cup in Japan. I was in group B which I thought had more strong people in it, but really it just doesn´t matter. I was really nervous most of my warm up just because I hadn´t competed in a world cup for over 8 months. The last few world cups I have done were all lead in September. The last Boulder world cup I did was back in July in Montauban, France. I always warm up expecting the qualifyers to be the hardest problems I´ve ever tried. I mean, this is world cup right? Hardest problems in the world aren´t they? I figure it´s a pretty good mind set so when I am able to flash a few, it´s a great morale booster. For qualifyers, there´s always 5 problems and 5 minutes per problem with your 5 minute rest in between. I´ve done the format so many times it´s almost second nature to me.

I came out and my first problem was a nice little slab one… great. In fact, I quite enjoy doing slab problems, it´s so different than all the problems back in North America, it feels like even an easy slab problem is challenging for me. I flashed the first problem as well as the second problem which went up a little dihedrial and then made its way up a small prow. After flashing the first two problems, I felt pretty good, 3 problems left. I expected the last 3 problems to be pretty hard to make up for the first two being pretty.

When I saw the 3rd problem, I wasn´t sure what to do. It seemed pretty obvious until the bonus hold but from there, I wasn´t sure whether to make my way left to a bad yellow sloper and then throw to the corner, or just match on the bonus and go straight to the corner. I got on and fell trying to throw left to the yellow. On my second try, I tried to match the bonus hold which was a big sloper and my feet popped and I fell. Kind of annoyed, I rested for a good minute and a half and tried it again. When I went to match the sloper, my feet stayed miraculously and I drove up the corner, I kind of reverse cupped the corner hold and threw to the finish. It turns out that the 3rd problem was actually the hardest, followed closely by number 4. The 4th problem was just a plain and simple dyno. The hard part wasn´t the dyno itself but where the holds were placed. You set up for the dyno one move off the starting holds by doing a little cross over. The hard part was the fact that they put a big round volume right in front of the next hold so you couldn´t see it. Before dynoing, you had to pull back, spot where you going to go, then pull back and in and fire blindly. When you caught the hold, I think you were supposed to palm the round volume to control the swing, but it was very strange indeed. It took me 3 tries to stick the dyno and the last moves were extremely easy compared to what you had just done.

The 5th problem wasn´t super hard but really tricky. The first move looked painfully easy to read with a hard move up with your right hand, but when you got on the problem, it seemed impossible to go up with your right hand. Turns out, I always went up with my left and then had to match it by palming the other side of the hold. The 5th problem was mostly just figuring out how to get on top of an enourmous red feature. On my first try, I made it just before the zone and tried to jump to it. I barn doored really hard and almost stuck the zone but still fell. On my second try, I came at the zone hold from underneath instead of the right and send the problem. In total, I sent all 5 problems with a total of 10 tries. I was pretty sure it would be enough for semi finals and I was right. In my group, you had to do at least 4 problems in 5 tries, which meant you had to flash at least 3 problems if you could only complete 4 of them.

Semi finals was the next day. Fron qualifyers, they took the top 10 climbers in both groups to have 20 men and 20 women in semi finals. I woke up with my right tricep really sore. I spent the whole time during my warmup just massaging my arm trying to make it feel better. I figured with all the adreneline I´d have while competing, I wouldn´t even feel it. Semi finals is made up of 4 problems with 6 minutes climbing and resting time. When I came out, I felt pretty excited. The first problem was another slab, this time on the right side of the competition wall. Turns out, it wasn´t very hard and most of the competitors flashed it. The second problem looked much harder. The start had pretty much no feet for a few moves. On my first try, I spent so long trying to figure out where my feet were supposed to go for the first 3 moves.

Turns out, you just paste your feet on the wall and campus. I screwed around too long and unfortunately fell going for the bonus. On my second try however, I just campused the first 2 moves and sent the problem on that try. The 3rd problem was absolutely ridiculous. Just matching the second hold felt impossible. I spent 6 minutes doing 2 moves of climbing and on my last try I almost stuck the 3rd hold, which was the zone. I figured if I struggled so hard on this problem, it was surely not going to get done. The 4th problem was also really hard. The first two moves were really strange, having to perch on your left foot and grab a pinchy undercling and then fire your right hand into almost the same hold on the overhand. From there, you just set up and dynoed up and left over the lip. There were two holds about a foot apart just over the lip. While I was trying the problem, it felt so close every time I jumped. I must have tried the problem about 7 times and got to the jump 5 of those times. The jump was just too hard. I finished the round having only done 2 problems in 3 tries and not even getting the zone for problem 3 or 4.

After talking with Daniel Woods about the problems, he too had only done 2 of the problems but got the zone on all of them. Sadly, he took 3 tries to do problem 2 which put me just ahead of him by one attempt. Even more heart breaking was at the end of the round when I concluded that you had to flash 2 problems in make finals. Because of the way they divided the competitors for qualifyers, they aren´t allowed to do a countback. Gabrielle Moroni made finals by just flashing the first two finals and not getting zone on 3 and 4 either. That means that I missed finals by a try… If I had flashed the second problem intead of doing it second go, I would´ve made finals again… Oh well, maybe next time. After semi finals, I finished in 9th place. 7th place went to David Lama who also missed finals by a fall and 8th placed went to Cédric Lachat also in the same boat. Just after me in 10th place was Daniel Woods and in 11th place was Jorg Verhoeven.

Finals were of course awesome to watch. The biggest problem was that they didn´t have enough chairs and it was really hard to see. Another fun fact was that of the 6 guys who made finals, they all came from group B in qualifyers, which I was also in. In finals were Killian Fischhuber, Gabriele Moroni, Adam Ondra, Lucas Preti, Mykhaylo Shalagin and Guillaume Glairon-Mondet. The 6 finalist for women were Akiyo Noguchi, Anna Stohr, Yulia Abrabmchuk, Maud Ansade, Natalija Gros, Anna Galliamove and Angelica Lind. Because two women tied for 6th place in semis, they took 7 women to finals. Full results can be found on the IFSC Website. Finals were fun to watch but for the men, it turned out the it came down to the first two problems. No one did problem 3 and 4 and Killian won the competition. The women put on quite a different show. Akiyo from Japana and Anna from Austria had tied in semi finals for 6th place and was the results of 7 people in finals. During the finals, they both managed to flash all 4 problems which meant a superfinal. After tweaking mens problem 2, they both came out and previewed then climbed individually. Akiyo went first and flashed the problem, Anna was second and flashed it as well. The cheers from the crowd were crazy and it turns out that according to IFSC rules, if they both flash the superfinal, they just tie… It kind of sucks that they didn´t go to a super superfinal but it was still pretty awesome to watch.

After the comp was over, there was a big afterparty. They had a live band which played a lot of really funny songs. They start with Umbrella by Rihanna which they sung terribly. After that first song, they were a lot better. After a few hours, the party moved to a more Disco part of the venue which played really good music. The party ended at about 3am with the police trying to push everyone outside

I just back from the Tour De Bloc regionals in Calgary. The competition was held at the Climbing Climbing Centre and it was a one day event. There was an on going blog as well as a live stream for finals.

During qualifyers, something really strange happened. Since Calgary is a very very dry city, there was no humidity. That mixed with most of the new holds that the gym had gotton for the competition made all of the competitors hands super sore after climbing for just a few hours. The competition was scramble format for qualifyers and zone format for finals. In the qualifyers, they took top 7 boulders. I found that after I had warmed up, done a few easier problems then done a few hard ones, the skin on my fingers was already super sore. It felt like I had already been climbing for 4+ hours. It was quite an effort to finish my last 2 problems and I did another 2 after I had 7 problems just to bump up my score. After qualifyers, I had qualified first just in front of Terry Paholek. I decided during our break time that I’d have to take some advil. My hands had swollen so much that it hurt just to wash them.

There was a big break in between qualifyers and finals, about 6 hours. While I was in isolation, I took a couple advil to make my hands swell down and numb the pain a bit. If you look on their website, they build two free floating walls for finals. They were pretty cool, they were just two free standing walls attached with ropes and wires to the ceiling.

For finals, they had 5 problems. Since I had qualified first, I was the last one out of iso. I was nervous leaving isolation but also excited. The last competition I was in was the Tour De Bloc in Kelowna just after my concussion. I wanted to get this competition in before I went to Europe to compete in World Cups. The First Boulder in finals was hard, it went up a little corner, then across a perfectly vertical wall. The last move was a dead point into a brand new circular sloper. The second problem was on the new feature. I thought it would swing around a bit more than it did but the features barely moved. It was cool transferring between 3 different free standing features and the problem was a bit easier than the first so I still flashed it.

The third problem was probably the hardest one in finals. After a few hard moves, you took a hold at the top of a feature and jumped for the final hold. The last hold wasn’t a jug but not quite a bad sloper. It was a pinch, but good enough to hold it with one hand. The move was off a little sloper on the top of a feature and you had to jump up and right to the last hold. For me, I thought I could only hit it with one hand so thats what I tried. I threw and grabbed it with one hand. As soon as I grabbed it, I thought I would fall for sure. I still tried as hard as I could and I miraculously controlled the outswing. On the first inswing, I tried to grab another hold to get my feet on but couldn’t grab anything. The second outswing was almost as hard as the first and hanging form one hand is hard for more than a second. On my second inswing, I felt my body start to turn around, so I went with it, twisted my body enough to match the final jug. From the cheer of the crowd, I was pretty sure no one had done the problem before me. Problem 4 looked nice as well, pretty straight forward sequence on what look to be pretty bad crimps. The problem went almost excatly how I had planned up till the last move. The final jug was about an inch below the top of the wall which was out. When I went to deadpoint to it, my fingers hit the top of the wall for a split second which made them unable to latch on to the final hold. I fell for the first time in finals from the top of the wall… I rested for a couple of minutes and sent the problem second try. After I had done the first 4 boulders, I knew I had won the competition. The last problem was also one of the easier ones. Simon Villenueve had put together 6 blocks. They stuck out of the wall about a foot each and were perfectly square. He put them up on the wall to make a nice sequence of moves. Although it wasn’t the hardest problems in finals, it was definately the coolests looking and it was awesome to climb on.

After finals was over, Vikki Weldon had won for the women and I had won for men. Second place went to Terry Paholek and Elise Sethna and third place went to Dan Archambault and Megan Cesarone.