I participated in my first Finals in a climbing comp and my god it was hard!
Everyone kept saying, “You signed up for Rec division? You should be in advanced.” The issue was the way it was set up- the divisions were that Rec were v0-4 and Advanced were v5-8. I, like many of my friends, are right in between in terms of a comp level. I had debated this for weeks, on which division to do. Because either I squash others or get squashed. It wasn’t really fair either way.
Also, I’ve done probably 7 or 8 comps this year and I am NOT an advanced comp climber. I’m really intermediate. I SUCK at comp climbing because it requires you to have good on site route reading abilities and to flash problems in a short amount of time. That is a major weakness of mine. I don’t do things fast and I need other people’s beta. In a 3 hour redpoint round, I am slow as hell and I don’t flash anything above 4 if I am lucky.
I PROJECT 5 and above. People see me in the gym projecting hard stuff because I ENJOY projecting and it’s a lot of fun. So most of the time people just see me on hard stuff that I’ve spent like 3 hours or more on ONE problem.
Anyways, so I did Rec and after redpoint round, I was ranked #1. Then I advanced to finals and I fell to #5 which again, just goes to show you what I knew all along- I suck at doing anything fast and finding my own beta. Because that’s what Finals are!
Finals Format- you have 6 problems, 4 minutes each to send it with 4 minutes rest in between. By this point though, we had already climbed for 3 hours and I just wanted to go home and take a nap. So I was pretty much falling asleep at this point. I even tried to take a nap but couldn’t because it was too loud. I did the best I could but I had ZERO energy and felt like I could barely climb a V1. Also, the finals problems for rec were harder than V4, in my opinion. If the rec division had V4 as the high point, they shouldn’t have V5 or V6 climbs in the finals problems. Finals problems should be at least 2 levels BELOW your best project level because you are doing it in 4 minutes with little rest in between.
Well, I survived the Finals round barely but at least I got cool prizes! I got 3 bags of friction lab chalk, a chalk bag, climb on, waterbottle, and a t-shirt. And I was in 5th! Melissa, who won, got bouldering pad AND shoes!
This is problem #2, which I was proud I even got up to the big blob hold. I am such a bad cave climber.
They put me in a video!
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