CWIF review

The fantastic new competition wall at the Climbing Works

Another year, another awesome CWIF event from the Climbing Works team! Honestly, it's an amazing event and full compliments to all the staff and organisers as it's now a big event on the annual year for both professional and 'normal' climbers. I know I'm going to try make it as regularly as I can.

Unfortunately I missed the finals on Sunday evening but by Sunday morning's semi-finals it was evident that it was going to be a good day for watching climbing instead of taking part. I'd arrived with the intention of just going climbing while the semi's were on, but it was so fascinating that there was no hope of doing so. I'm rarely distracted in that sort of way when at the wall but this was brilliant to watch, with some big name stars going out in the semi's - with some help from Climbing Works problem weirdness :)

My own climbing, well as usual it was an interesting experience. I basically had no expectations on the day as I knew there was no chance of qualifying (or even making the top 20 or 30) so it turned out that I didn't really give it my all on some of the problems and ended up with a pretty average result at the end of the day. I knew I hadn't given it my all when I realized that I was not really sore in any way on Sunday when I got up.....The big positive is that it was a good learning experience to estimate that of the 30 qualifying problems, there was only about 2 or 3 of them that I have little or no chance on.
It's pretty inspiring watching a bunch of people giving it absolutely 110% every time they stepped onto the wall. The huge positive is that this seems to have re-awoken that mental grit that has been missing from my climbing since last summer. I'm blaming it on the stress of work for it, but I've known for a while I'm not really giving it my all at times. Some invisible block seems to have been broken through however as the session last night was one of my best in ages - attacking holds and not really giving up. A friend said a while ago that he's known all the training plans and theory's for a long time and he thought he was giving it 100% until a while ago, that is until he really started giving it 100%. I'm starting to understand what he means, I have a feeling I've been pretty inconsistent at this point for quite a while!
After Spain I'm definitely missing 'real' rock too since I've gotten back. I'm really motivated to be properly ready for this trip so hopefully it keeps the fire burning on the indoor wall motivation for another 6 weeks!

Anyway, Nigel as always put in an awesome performance and made the final - not bad for a guy who's on a medical placement and hasn't really climbed in about 2 months! One of the interesting asides of the comp is the 'tricky-ness' of competition climbing. One of the semi-final starts involved stepping onto a vertical wall onto a small volume with all hands and feet on it at the same time. Not sure you'd really come across this on 'real' rock so sometimes it can feel particularly cruel to have a problem such as this! Still though, with everyone being so strong I presume they have to find creative ways to isolate the field.

All in all, a brilliant weekend and topped off with the Sheffield Adventure Film weekend (SHAFF) - got to see some nice footage of Leo Houlding on his new route at Yosemite, some bouldering footage from the states. By far the most amazing film I've seen in a long time of Uli Steck running up the Eiger in 2 hours 40 minutes - I'm still blown away by what was shown. Wow.........

Adam Ondra takes onsighting into the next realm

I can't even begin to understand the level of this........and there'll be a write-up on the CWIF later!

Adam Ondra takes onsighting into the next realm: "

Adam Ondra has done it again. Yet again he manages to stunn the climbing world. It would seem the one month break from climbing a couple of months back didn't make him weaker...
In two days at Etxauri, he onsighted two 8c+'s, one 8c and one 8b+. The 8c+'s were Kidetasunaren balio erantsia and Bizi euskaraz, which previously has been done in the same style by Patxi Usobiaga. According to witnesses he didn't even take his shoes off between the onsights of Fuck the police,8c, and Tekken,..."

Improving 'The Resistance' - slowing down

Image credit: brixton50.co.uk

As part of this new emphasis on improving general suffering, sorry endurance ;), or long sustained sequences of climbing I'm putting more emphasis on climbing slower. Why? Mainly because I realized that I was basically just throwing myself at the laps sometimes and almost sprinting around them because the moves are so familiar. I'd actually forgotten this - at one point when I trained, I used to have a stopwatch set to go off every 20 or so seconds. Whatever hold you were on, no matter how good are bad it was, I had to stop and hold it until the watch beeped again 5 seconds later. Grim, but it worked!

Regarding speed, you do climb very quickly, especially when red-pointing routes and crux sections, but you also have to do things like stop to chalk up, clip quickdraws, etc. - all stuff that are easy to avoid when lapping on a board. So, to help this ever 5 holds I'm stopping if possible and almost counting to 10 to simulate stopping to clip a draw. And of course, I'm climbing slower - not snail slow but closer to what I remember was the pace on routes last week.

My first experience of it last night was much more accurate to last weeks experience, and I also noticed a side benefit in some ways: because you have to hold onto a hold for longer, the other arm gets more time to recover - exactly like what you're aiming for on routes! Game on :)

thoughts?