Youth Bouldering Championships 2015 - Bloc (Bristol)

On Saturday 27th June I went to the Junior British Bouldering Championship and Junior British Bouldering Cup. It was held in Bloc climbing Centre where I boulder sometimes. I came first overall on the day meaning I am Junior British Bouldering Champion 2015 of category C. As I only entered rounds 1 and 3 because I was competing in the YCCF in Imst, I could only get a maximum of 200 points. I got 200 points because I won rounds 1 and 3 but it wasn't quite enough to win the over all series. I missed out on 1st place by two points - I am really gutted. 

I did this blog post differently by making it into a commentary video where my Dad put together a video of all my climbs and I spoke over it. Here it is:

 

Blokfest - TCA Bristol

On Saturday morning we drove across the Severn Bridge again, but this time to go to Blokfest at TCA bouldering centre in Bristol. When we arrived in Bristol, I had some hash browns for breakfast  before driving on to the centre.

We arrived early and we went around to look at all of the blocs and decided which ones to climb first. By the time we had finished looking at the problems we had half an hour to warm up so my brother Oscar and I started to warm up.

The briefing started at five to 10 and it wasn't long before we were able to start the problems. I started on easy ones but underestimated one of the climbs and fell off it. It was on a flat wall and there was a square volume in the middle - the only good hold on the climb. After failing this I was annoyed because it looked easier than it was. I failed it because I wasn't facing the right way on the volume as I found out later.

I was sad after this so I took a break and then went back to try some more of the easy climbs then attempted some more of the difficult ones. Some of these really annoyed me but I managed to do a few. The cave was one of the ones that annoyed me because I couldn't stick the third move for long enough which meant I couldn't get my heel on to do the next move.

I had lunch with my brother (we had mini eggs) and then went back in to try some of the problems that I had failed earlier. I was really happy because I managed to top the problem with the square volume which I failed before. The other one I topped was one which started with two really bad holds that I could only just pull off. The next two moves were easy but then the last move was reachy (for me).

I thought that Saturday was the worst Blokfest I have done because I seemed to be irritable for most of the morning.

One of the things that annoyed me was that one of the volumes wasn't taped up and I didn't know whether I could use it or not because in the briefing they said that the only volume that was in was on another climb and that all the rest would be taped up. I saw some people using it and some people not so I didn't know what to do when I was on the climb - but I didn't use it just in case.

This Blokfest seemed to harder than the others but I don't know if this was because the problems were harder or because I was tired and irritable.

National Bouldering Academy - Bloc Climbing Bristol

I woke up early on Saturday and my family and I went across the Severn bridge to Bristol to Bloc Climbing for the National Bouldering Academy day.

We had breakfast in McDonalds on the way and the journey only took 40 min.

When we arrived my brothers and I put our shoes on and went straight to the roof because you can climb on top of it and jump off. This was one of the things we really enjoyed on our last visit to Bloc.

At ten all the climbers sat on the sofas and Ben, Lucinda, Tom and Hamish (who coach the

national bouldering academy) took us through a power point giving us lots of useful information.

After this we went bouldering and rated each other on some different topics (some of which I didn't quite understand). This was my favourite part of the session. We did this for an hour and a half, climbing different blocs to demonstrate the techniques.

Next we listened to some more ideas that the GB team had for training that we could use. We also watched a video showing the difference between first place and second place in the World Cup.

The second place climber used strength and wasn't very efficient but the winner was efficient and balanced this was why she won.

Following that we had a half an hour break for lunch. Lunch was over quickly so we all sat down and Tom told us about massaging our muscles with a tennis ball. We went upstairs to the training room to try out the massaging technique. This was fun.

We went down stairs after this and Tom took us into the bouldering area so that we could try and make up a bloc that we would find more often in comps. I was in a group with Izzy, Fin and Oscar. We made a bloc where you run jump off a foot hold and catch a volume, you then push out to the side wall and grab a pretty bad hold before getting a high foot on the volume and pushing up to reach the top hold. It took us a few goes but we managed to do it eventually.

Once all of the groups made there bloc everyone went around trying each others blocs I managed to do them all first go accept one which was really hard. By this time it was 16:30 so we finished with a group photo.