Rocfest 2013

A few weeks ago we travelled to Manchester for the annual Rocfest bouldering competition at the Rockover bouldering wall. The wall is pretty nice, looks like a good training facility, with rings and a campus board. The qualifiers were packed, so many people and lots of the problems were long traverses that often blocked other lines, so it was difficult to get on a lot of the time. I climbed badly in the qualifiers, but with some running around with very little time left on the clock I made it through to the finals in 2^nd place.

Isolation went fine and I felt a bit stronger in the warm up, although still not as good as I’ve felt recently. The crowd was big and psyched, and the music was great. In observation all the problems looked good and all pretty flashable, bar maybe the last one.

I knew the first 2 out had topped problem 1 first go, and I could hear the crowd cheering. It was me out next, and I felt surprisingly calm. I topped pretty easily, it wasn’t as hard as it looked, but I was still happy to have got the first one out of the way.

The second problem I was pretty stupid on. During observation I discounted completely a big volume at the start, and only after a go of falling off the last move did I think to ask if it was in or not. Obviously the answer was yes, a silly mistake. Something to remember for next time! Using this volume I did the first move much more easily and carried on to what I presumed was the crux dyno to the finishing hold. I set up and sprung upwards to the hold, latching it with my right hand. 2^nd go, better. After the first qualifier topped 3^rd go, this put me in 1^st place going into the final problem.

This one was much harder, especially the crux slap to a small crimp off of a big sloper. I felt very close to this move, but after 30 qualifying problems and a long day, my forearms were flash pumping from the first move and my fingers were uncurling by the time I got to the move. I had failed to top, and as noone else had topped this climb it meant the final climber had to top to win. I was a stressful 4 minutes as he tried again and again. He hit the stopper move as the rest of us had and fared in the same way. His 4 minutes were up, down he came, I had won.

Nice little clip of me topping problem 2 on this!

I was pleased with how this comp ended up, especially as I wasn’t climbing at my best. My power has improved a lot over the last month or so, and I had one of my best ever bouldering sessions a week before the CWIF on Saturday! I have just returned from a very wet but amazing week in El Chorro, blog to follow soon!