GB Team Assessment Weekend - Day 2

I woke up really late on Sunday so I had to rush to get my bags packed so that we could get to the centre by 10:00. I went downstairs for breakfast and had the full English breakfast - it was really nice. We got to the centre at 10:00 and the whole team went upstairs for a talk with Sue, Ian, John and Molly about our goals. My goals are:

1.  To onsight an 8a this year

2.  To win a European competition.

3.  To win the world championship.

After the talk we when downstairs to do a team warm up, Molly and Alex led it. We ran down the road and played tag in a garden which was really fun. We then jogged back in to the centre to stretch and do mobility before we started climbing.

Kirsten and I decided to climb together and we did an easy pink to warm up which we both topped easily. We then tried the Orange 7c from the assessment. After two attempts I got past the point where I fell of and went on to get to two clips from the top.

I then tried the green 7c+ and got to the crimp before the triangular undercut and tried to jump for the side of it but it was sloping and useless!

After this I tried the yellow 7b+ again - this was the one I messed up in the assessment. This time I got passed the fourth clip and well past half way. I felt much better about this as I knew I could get further than I got on Saturday.

At 1 o'clock my family and I had to leave to get lunch before going to the Diamond Gymnasium in Halifax where Ian had organised a session with a gymnastics coach.

The team was split into two groups depending on how far away they lived from Halifax. I was in the first group so I could get off early and not get back home too late. When we got there we had to take off all jewellery and shoes before starting the session.

First of all we did a group warm up and then got into pairs and played a game where we had to do various exercises as fast as possible and sit back to back to win. I was with Izzy and the game was great fun.

For the second game we got into two groups Girls+Kieran vs Boys. We did three games, in one of them, we had to stand in a line. Then the last person in the line would crawl through everyone else's legs and the next person would then follow. This would continue until everyone had gone through everyones legs twice. I was the smallest and there wasn't much room for taller team members to get through my legs.

We did loads of different activities such as jumping over foam blocks, climbing ropes, swinging on bars and rings. We also got into lines and ran and jumped on springboards to do front somersaults onto matts. This was really good fun because the springboard made everyone jump really high.

When we were finished all the activities we were allowed to explore the other apparatus and the other section of the gym. There was a big foam pit next to the trampolines and we did front somersaults into it. Angus was really good at this and was jumping really high. He tried too hard on one of them and whacked his knee into his face and was out for the rest of the session!


At the end we did two races, one was who could climb the rope the fastest William won with a time of 3.95 sec. The other race was who can sprint to the end of the track and jump into the pit the fastest. The was fun, but I didn't really know who won.

Overall the gym session was really good and I had a lot of fun. The coaches in Diamonds made it a really enjoyable session.