Two weekends in Sheffield - CWIF and BUCS 2012!
I really should be writing my psychology essay just now rather than a blog, but I’ve had two very eventful weekends which I think merit a write up whilst it is all still fresh in my mind! I have just returned from competing in the Climbing Works International Festival in Sheffield and the BUCS university championships, both events that I have been looking forward to since last year. So when asked by the crew at TCA Glasgow whether I would like to be part of their team at CWIF alongside Alan Cassidy, Gary Vincent and Alex Gorham I was more than willing to take on the challenge. Also, the chance to represent Edinburgh University in the sport we love would be a great honour for the whole team at BUCS.
Everything in the few weeks beforehand had been looking up - my finger was feeling fairly well-healed and mentally I was preparing to train hard again for my upcoming trip to Spain and for whatever I might get up to in the summer months. As though I had jinxed myself through my newfound optimism, I had a new hurdle to overcome - an achilles paratendinopathy. Stubbornly, I had persisted with the ever-intensifying pain I was experiencing in my right heel when wearing my latest pair of climbing shoes. I shrugged it off as being mere discomfort that most people experience when first wearing a new style of shoe, rested for a few days and then carried on. Yet as the pain refused to subside and even simply walking one step in my shoes became unbearable I knew something a bit more serious was going on, and so I decided to get help from a physio! I was worried that my Achilles tendon was the problem, and certainly didn’t want to risk a full or partial rupture!
Luckily, my problem was limited to the sheath of the tendon only, which was really inflamed and swollen from being aggravated by a very narrow, tight heel fit from the shoe. My right foot endured several episodes of acupuncture, ultrasound, massage and kinaesio taping to try and put it right. Whilst the immediate effect was a reduction in pain, as soon as I put climbing shoes on it would flare up again, and even everyday shoes were starting to aggravate the sheath. I was prescribed ibuprofen in the expectation that it would reduce the inflammation and help the healing process, and in the meantime Scarpa sent me a pair of Forces (a less aggressive shoe - one that doesn’t bite heels!) in a bigger size, so I tried to get used to climbing with odd shoes without putting too much pressure on my foot. It wasn’t perfect and my foot was still sore, but it was the best I could do for now.
It was the night before the big day at CWIF, and after a few organisational mishaps and inconsistencies Team TCA Glasgow had finally met up at EICA Ratho and were ready to leave for Sheffield! It was 8pm on a Friday night, and we were more than aware that in under 12 hours we would be getting up for the morning session of the competition - and we still had a 6 hour journey to Sheffield to make! Jen did a great job of getting us there despite how late we had left and the length of the journey. As per usual, I was relegated to the middle seat in the back as the littlest!
We arrived at Stu and Jules Littlefair’s house at 2:30am and tried not to wake anyone up or be attacked by “the sleeping cat at the top of the stairs”, of which we had been forewarned. Fortunes were reversed from being the middle man in the car to ending up on the sofa bed and leaving Gaz and Alan to sleep on the floor in the dining room! :p it was 3am by now and we were due to leave the house at 8am…sweet dreams!
The irritatingly chirpy alarm woke me up and reminded me of how little sleep we had had, time to get up and get energised for a busy day! We bundled into the car and set off for the Works, a short drive away and an opportunity for Alan to try and remember his way around his former home-town! The car park was almost full to the brim and the wall was a hive of nervous energy and excitement. I immediately recognised lots of faces, and it was this aspect of the weekend I had been most looking forward to, the chance to meet up with friends that I hadn’t seen for a while since growing out of the junior team and through not having partaken in any events down south recently.
After a brisk warm up it was time to face the weird and wonderful creations that the setters had concocted for us. A few of the easier problems were tricky but I managed to do most of the lower end ones. My heel was sore but I was trying to grin and bear it for the most part, but this meant that on a lot of the technical problems on the slabs and vertical walls I had to weight my right foot more than I wanted to, and occasionally I would just drop off to avoid the pain. I did fairly well on the few steeper problems but in all the technical problems had let me down. Gaz, Alan and Alex had been climbing very consistently over the course of the day but like many others had dropped some problems due to silly mistakes and slips. In this kind of strict time-limited competition which has well over 150 competitors climbing at one time it isn’t difficult to lose concentration and rush things. The team had dropped some points due to not getting round all of the problems, but in general we had had fun and learned a fair bit about our own climbing. Highlights for me were using a sneaky finger jam on a tough steeper problem and power screaming to grab the last jug on a tricky crimpy problem!
Whilst the rest of the team went out to Stanage I stayed back and caught up with a lot of friends that I hadn’t seen in a while and watched some of the later group climbing. Afterwards we went out to an amazing Turkish restaurant where Chicken Shish seemed to be the dish of the evening! The Sunday was spent (most of us in agony from the exertion of the day before!) at Stanage again for a few hours before heading back to the Works to watch the finals. Many attempts were had at Brad Pitt by the boys but unfortunately to no avail, and I decided to rest my heel and take photos and video of the day.
Back at the Works, the crowd was filling up the buiding. Lots of familiar faces in the finals and massive support from the crowd. I managed to find a speck beside Ailsa and Kitty right up at the front, so much so that we were squished against the barriers! The finals were quite a spectacle - so many strong climbers and mostly British! I was really inspired by the performances of the finalists and thought the problems looked amazing. We are very lucky to have such a world-renowned event of high quality and multinational participation here in the Uk, and I can’t wait to get involved again next year (and hopefully without injuries!)
All in all a hectic but fun weekend! Thanks must go to TCA Glasgow and Bristol for funding this and giving me the chance to participate!
BUCS
This weekend was BUCS weekend and it was time for me to once again return to the Works. This time I was travelling down (on a very hot and uncomfortable bus) with some very good friends from my University, many of them in the EUMC. Myself, Clara, Valerie, Clement, Ryan, Chris, Sam, and Eddie (along with Ted and Chris who were volunteering as judges for the event) made up Team Edinburgh. Last year we came 2nd to Sheffield as a team and this year we were keen to try and go one better! However, there were mixed feelings towards the competition on the way down - my heel was still giving me grief and I had been ill from taking medication specially prescribed for it all week, Chris had a finger injury, Ryan had had flu all week and Eddie hadn’t been bouldering in a while! :p With these negatives in mind we had to work very hard indeed to try and stay positive for the competition - after all, we were there to have fun and spend some time on the grit on Sunday but our main goal was to bring back some medals for the University!
My heel had still been hurting through the week since CWIF and the medicine had made me feel ill. The night before leaving an idea popped into my head, one that involved cutting the heel of my shoes. I had already split it a fraction and carved some of the rubber into a looser shape but it was still causing me pain. I got some scissors and cut right down the heel, not far from the bottom, and tried them on. The lack of contact with the shoe meant that my Achilles was relatively pressure-free which meant no pain! It was still slightly sore but much more bearable than before. I was so happy that already I started to feel better about BUCS.
Hungry and tired we arrived at our hotel and set off to find some food. Chino’s fast food shop on London Road provided us with all the calories and meat feasts we needed in order to perform like proper athletes the next day. Pizzas, kebabs and curries - food of champions! Back at the hotel we relaxed in front of the tv and discussed tactics for the event, before staying up later than we should have watching the Mask of Zorro….
The next morning was basically a repeat of the CWIF weekend before - a case of deja vu! Up early and travelling to the wall for 8am, we had one small problem in that we were not entirely sure of the way to walk to the Works. 45 minutes later and we had made it with just under 15 minutes to go before registration was due to close. Fortunately we had an hour to relax before climbing began. We scoped out our problems and split into pairs to go round together. I was working with Clara, and we started off on some easier problems before testing ourselves on the competition wall. We had two and a half hours to complete 25 problems, but I knew from last year just how tight for time we were and the rushing around at CWIF had me well trained for this year’s event! Eventually time started catching up with us and with half an hour left I still had about 8 problems to try, luckily most of them easier ones which by now had no queues. A mad dash, some stressing out and and a few more points later we were finished! I ended up flashing every problem on my first attempt apart from one which I got second go, and the other two I didn’t complete but earned 2 bonuses. More than anything I was happy with how I had climbed in comparison with the weekend before - splitting the heel of the shoe had made such an unbelievable difference that I wished I had done it earlier and before CWIF! I had a good score but it would be a nervous few hours of waiting until the second group had finished climbing to see whether I had done enough. The rest of the team had performed fantastically - top scorer being Eddie and Ryan just one point below my score, particularly impressive considering he was very ill in the morning and almost didn’t compete! Sam, Chris, Clement, Clara and Valerie had also climbed to their best and had a great day of tenacious climbing. Everyone was very supportive and worked well as a team, which is exactly how we had wanted it to be.
A few of us stayed at the wall or went back to the hotel for a bit whilst others went to Burbage. I had to stay at the wall in case of a tie as I had scored the highest from the first round in the women’s event, and later on the organiser and route setter of the event Mark Pretty (Zippy) gathered the scores from the girls he thought had been looking strong. “I think you have won Nat!” I was very happy to hear this and couldn’t believe that I’d managed to win after the setbacks of the last few weeks. I was very lucky that I found a temporary solution to the heel problem as otherwise I definitely wouldn’t have won - there were some very strong women in my category, including ex-junior GB Team members, a GB Bouldering Team member and generally lots of very impressive climbers.
The next focus was the team ranking - how had Edinburgh fared overall? We added our top 3 scores together and thought we might have a good chance of getting onto the podium as a team again. After standing on the podium (made of bouldering mats!) I received my trophy and gold medal. Then the team results were read out along with the scores. “3rd place, Sheffield!…..” we knew then that we were either 1st or 2nd…”2nd place…Edinburgh!” we had matched our team placing from last year and also defeated our main rivals from the year before! Congratulations to Leeds who took 1st place, 4 points ahead of us. Me, Ryan and Valerie stood on the podium with silver medals and collected some t-shirts for the rest of the team.
Absolutely exhausted we headed back to the hotel and had a very lazy dinner of fish and chips - we needed to reward ourselves for our efforts after all!
The next day we set off to Stanage (my second home over the last two weeks!) to climb for a few hours before being picked up in the minibus in town to go home. My body was still aching from the day before (and possibly still from CWIF?) so I wasn’t feeling too psyched to try and push myself too hard, but it was nice to be climbing on rock again after a long while and be outside in the sun ( the day had brightened up considerably since the morning, luckily!) everyone pottered about and at the end of the day it was nice to catch up with the rest of the mountaineering club who had come down on a separate trip to the Peak. They had to endure two nights of camping in the rain when we were in a lovely hotel :p
Eventually it was time to head back into town and through a series of events involving uncooperative taxi-drivers, helpful tea and cake stall owners at plantation car-park and a spot of luck we somehow managed to get back into town for 6pm ready to head home. McDonald’s provided us with yet more fast food to round the weekend off and at 11:30pm we arrived in Edinburgh completely exhausted. Well done guys, here’s to next year!
2 and a half weeks til SPAIN!!!!!