A Strong Start

Hello Again!
Sorry I was too lazy to get this written sooner. Two weeks ago was the first sanctioned competition of the 2013-2014 year. Being at my home gym (Rock Jungle Fitness), I was really excited for the event, and also had set expectations relatively high. The total turnout was spectacular, with over 40 people competing in the Open Male category. This was fairly intimidating, but I had established a plan I believed would yield the best results. Although there was a relatively small number of athletes in my category, they were very strong and I new i would need to perform at my best. Additionally, I knew that it would be costly to fall on any hard problems, as I had fairly poor endurance and the lines to get on the wall were about 10-15 minutes long. Fortunately, things were going very well, and I flashed a solid top 6 problems. One of these was very crimpy, but I was ecstatic to get no grief from my previously injured fingers during or after the climb. One other guy in my category was very close to me, and I knew I needed to do a hard slab problem that I had previously not gotten very far on. This was a bit of a worry, because slab is not my forte to say the least, but I managed to get the send with only a small fraction of the comp left. I knew that that send secured first place in the 16-17 boys category, and given the incredibly strong open competitors I had dismissed any hope of making finals at the start of the comp. I glanced over at the results while waiting around after the scramble round (45 problems, 3 hours to climb, top 6 count), and was shocked to see myself sitting in 9th place! Although only eight climbers go through to finals, I was super psyched and motivated to see that, perhaps on the right day, that I could climb my way into finals so to speak :P. Rock Jungle and all the finalists put on a terrific show, and I was glad to be a small part of it. A lot of people in other categories climbed amazingly, and it was super inspiring to see youth athletes push through fatigue and fight to earn two spots on the female open podium! Youth Competitors of all ages and genders through down, and its got me really excited to see whats gonna go down in three weeks time in Calgary. But until then, Goodbye!