British Bouldering Championships 2012

This weekend I took the long trip up to Sheffield to compete in the British Bouldering Championships. I went up on the Saturday to check out the wall and it looked sick, not too steep but technical, and the senior problems looked awesome! 

I came back on the Sunday to a very muddy Graves Park, with the section below the warm up wall being a muddy puddle! The problems looked good, and as I was in the second qualifying group I watched the first group to get a bit of beta on the problems. They all looked doable to reasonable and after warming up our group were called and I got straight in, being the first to climb. I got on the second easiest problem to warm up, and got up it easily. The second problem I went on was one of the hardest, and getting on it so soon could have been a mistake on my part, falling off 3 times in reasonably quick succession. I was frustrated, so forced myself to rest, but again I got on a grey problem and fell on my first attempt, despite it being a reasonably easy. This attempt was the difference between making the podium and not in this competition, and although I dispatched it easily on my next attempt, the frustration was there so I moved on to some easier problems to boost my confidence and bank some points.

My second go at problem 6

I got up the rest quite easily (apart from a shaky top on a black press problem) and was drawing with Pete for 3^rd place, but he had all 3 attempts on the final problem that I also had goes left on. Despite him coming off low down on his first 2 goes, he just stuck the bonus on his final attempt and that pushed my back a place to 4^th. I had a final attempt, in which I very nearly topped it, but greasy hands and a small sequence error kept me off the finishing hold. Very close, but extremely far.

Overall I placed 11^th (Against Youth A, B and C) and in Youth B I got 4^th.

Doesn’t matter, bouldering isn’t real climbing anyway… ;)

CEUSE next week!!! :D