On Sunday I went to the BMC’s Open Youth bouldering event at The Climbing Works, which is my local climbing centre and where I train the most! I was a bit nervous as this was my first event in where I was competing in my 2016 category of “B”, which is for children born in 2001 and 2002.
Sunday was a very cold day but luckily we didn’t have far to drive in the cold car. We got to the climbing centre on time at 8 o’clock for registration. I went to have a look round the problems while my Dad signed me in.
The problems were all in bright pink so were easy to find! They looked like they had been set quite hard – normally there’s one or two that you think of as “warm up” problems but unfortunately none looked like that this time!
I had started my warm up at home as we live quite close by but carried on after looking at the problems. It was so cold I kept my coat and hat on and my Dad had to warm up my shoes under his jumper! We had the briefing and then I carried on warming up to get ready for the hard climbs straight away.
The first three problems were all on the slab which was good as I’d been doing a lot of slab training recently. The first problem involved pushing up from the start and then doing a big reach (which I had to dyno) up to the next hold – which was a pretty small hold.
It took me three attempts but I was really pleased when it stuck and I made it to the top. I’d not seen anyone else do this problem yet so I felt good. I found out later that some of the older girls from the A and Junior categories couldn’t do it too!
I then tried some of the harder ones in the central area – these were really tough climbs and tested a lot of the climbers.
I managed to get a couple of bonus holds and then went back out to the slab where I managed to top another one – the slab was being nice to me today!
Unfortunately I didn’t manage to make the final this time but I was quite pleased with my first climb in “B” category, on what was a very hard set of problems. It was also the first comp where I used my new FiveTen gear which was great. I stayed to watch the final which was good fun to be watching my friends!
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