Days of route-setting

KILDARE, IRELAND (Usual Suspect's blog) - A bit late in posting this, but it's been a hectic week!

The climbing intervarsities were on over the weekend, see a report here on TGU from Steve McG and Ailish. Good write-up, and good to see it as a guest post (Steve, I'll let you post it all yourself next time ;).
As ever DCU pulled it out of the bag and roped up a pile of sponsorship to cover the event. Always great to see them supplying such great prizes to the students! Kudos the sponsors for stumping up also.

Anyway, my involement? I was setting most of the routes for the roped competition. You know yourself, sure how hard and time-consuming can it be? Err..... As ever getting the grades right was a little interesting and after setting three routes (thanks Michael N for setting the final one), it averaged out that I spent FOUR hours on each route just putting the holds up and tweaking them to keep it interesting. As it happened I believe they stuck a roof section on one of my routes due to worries over too many people climbing the route clean - I believe only one person made it to the last hold of my route (and held it - it was a dynamic move :) so that's pretty good for me!
On a side note, I was sooo wrecked after it. Bumping up and down an an 11-meter wall on an ascender takes it's toll and sore elbows were the order of the day on Saturday. All good now though.
Must say a massive thanks to Eamon for arranging the wall and letting me have the run of the place for two days! Much appreciated :)

Image: My home for two days - Westwood climbing wall