TCA Redpoint Competition (R1)

I love climbing at TCA Glasgow! It's always loads of fun when you have endless amounts of boulder problems to go at. For me, as I climb and set mainly at EICA, I go through problems fairly rapidly, so having the TCA less than an hour away is really beneficial if I want to step up my bouldering level.

This year, TCA are hosting 4 bouldering competitions across the winter months. I am going to use these as personal goals to focus my strength and power training over the winter. I did well in the last two events held earlier this year and late last year - placing 1st in the Onsight and 2nd in the Redpoint event.

Today I took part in the first of the four events. This one being a Redpoint event allows for the climber to have as many goes on the problems during the qualifying round as they want with the number of goes not affecting the overall score, only the height you achieve when starting from the bottom.

I was climbing well in the qualifying round despite noticing that my skin was peeling off in copious amounts. I think this was from doing a lot less climbing than I'm used to recently, so skin built up into callice on the pads and began to peel off in waxy flakes! 

EURGGGGGGHHHHHHHHH!!!!!!

The qualifiers were set by Paul Twomey and Joe Day. The problems were really well set, with interesting funky sequences and a good selection of hard problems to split the field. I find that I always do well in the qualifiers thanks to the length of some of the harder blocs. If the hardest problems where shorter then no doubt some of the stronger boulderers would cruise them and I'd be scuppered, but I always come through strong when the hard problems are long enduro fests :D In fact, I don't think I have lost a qualifying round yet?

This round I won the qualifiers based on three blocs in my opinion:

TCA Board Red Bloc

This beast of a problem was around 13 moves long in total and where most where just getting tired and falling off, I could keep going. 13 moves doesn't sound like very long, but it was powerful, upside down and very beta intensive! My style basically...

I managed to make it all the way to the last move, sticking the second last hold only just but failing when my feet cut sending me hurtling into the crowd behind me :P Almost killed several kids!

Endurance Board Traverse

There was a tricky bloc to the right of the circuit boards. On this one I managed to make quite a high flash attempt just skimming 48, which we all took as 46 due to ourdynamic slap and sudden dismount. I was lucky on returning about half-way through the comp to almost get a top just missing the last hold three times! At that point I decided to call it a day on this problem... Funnily enough I ended up returning later on and making the last move but not from the start!!!

Cobra Rood Red

I knew I would get high points on this for the pure fact that it was around 20 moves long! I never actually got past my 2nd attempt high point which was on the crux moves about 15 moves into the problem. I made this high point but other competitors I saw where only making a few moves lower than mine.

These three problem secured me a strong 1st place lead in the quali's, but I did feel that perhaps my eagerness to place high in the quali's might set me up badly for the finals. The finals was a tussle between me, Eddie Barbour of Ireland and local boy Chris Everett.

To be totally honest, Eddie wiped the floor with us! He topped all 3 problems in awesome style and I'm actually pretty upset with the whole experience :P How can I lose to an Irishman! I'm competing at ILCC's (Irish Lead Climbing Championships) next month so I can't let him beat me again. After the comp we discussed what might have gone wrong with some of our performances and why Eddie did so well. I think Eddie is just going stronger than me at the moment to be fair, although a few things to take note of for future comps that I felt held me back was:

1. On the first Bloc (No.3), I made the silly mistake of doubting my own sequence when it failed first time round. If I hadn't I probably would have topped that one on my 2nd go...
2. In the 2nd Bloc (No.1), I made a very bad route reading error of not noticing a really good heel hook that would have given me the ability to make two moves further and potentially given me another top!
3. The third problem (No.2) by then was totally smeggin' greasy. The sloper at the start was hideosuly greasy. Couple with the fact that my body temp was probably above 40 degrees and I was bucketing sweat didn't help. Realistically, that problem was only do-able if you where: a) strong enough that sweat wasn't an issue b) lacked sweat glands or c) had it as your first problem and therefore not already piping hot!

Basically, what I have discovered from this competition is that I need to sort out my Boulder route reading skillz before the next comp, I need to up my power enduro a bit for the finals, I need to make sure I am recurited to max strength and power and  finally... I need to drug Eddie before the next comp just enough so it looks like he's just weaker than me and not too much that he's having to bail... because that would just feel like a hollow victory now wouldn't it  :P

Also, big well done to the Edinburgh juniors Fraser Mcalwraith, Eilidh Vas Payne, Claudia Charlwood, Kirsten Gray, Keira Farmer and Jodie Brown for a great display of awesome climbing the whole day!