On Friday afternoon I went to the newly opened bouldering centre in Bristol called Bloc climbing. My Dad entered me and my bro Oscar into the junior competition. We had a look around the centre and there was a big roof at the back of Bloc that you could climb on top of and jump off. We were looking forward to having a go. The rest of the centre looked really cool. There was a variety of different walls and problems to try.
Next we warmed up and finished just as the competition started. We collected our score sheet from the desk and found an easy problem to start with. The competition was self scoring for the qualifiers with a timed final. There were 20 qualifying routes and 3 in the final.
I started with some easy problems and then tried some middle difficulty ones. After these I only had 7 mostly hard problems left. I had a break and a drink so that I had energy left for the last 7. One of these was the roof climb. I was really looking forward to this because it was the only roof climb in the whole comp. It didn't look too hard and I managed to top it first attempt. I had only 6 problems to go and I managed to top 3 easily. The 3 remaining problems were difficult. I tried the blue bloc 5 once and failed. After this I had my attempt on the other two blocs 14 and 7. I failed these as well which was disappointing. I watched Oscar for a while and then tried the blue again. This time I tried a different method, one that Oscar tried. I failed again but I knew this method would work next time. After resting I tried again and topped it. This was the last climb I topped in the qualifiers. I scored 174 of 200.
This was not enough to qualify for the final. I was 4th and the top 3 qualified. But the team at Bloc climbing organized a mini final for all the younger competitors who didn't really stand a chance against the older children.
After the main final was complete I tried the female final problems. I managed to top the first two of these on my first attempt which I think would have put me in first place if I had qualified for the final. It was frustrating that I didn't top the yellow 14 problem in qualifiers as this caused me to not get in the final.
In the mini-final there was my brother Oscar, my friend Gwen, Xavier and me. Steve from Bloc climbing picked 4 blocs for us to try - we had a minute each. Xavier and me topped all of them and Gwen and Oscar also did really well. Steve picked another problem for me and Xavier to try and we both got to the same point on this so Steve had to pick yet another problem. He picked a blue on the competition wall. I went first on the other climb so Xavier was first on this one. Xavier got to the second top but I topped the climb and won the mini-final.
Steve gave me prize of 4 free entry passes to the centre which I look forward to using soon.
I really enjoyed the visit to Bloc climbing and it is now my favourite bouldering only centre.
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