When you know you can do something, and you know that climbing it is within your ability, its gutting when you recognise that you didnt do it before tiring.
Last night was round 1 of the Foundry comp. It was quiet. Nicely set problems - 15 in total, three tricky and one hard. Flashed 13, dropped one easy one (twice!) and had about 150 goes on the hard one. I must have tried about 10 times to stick the first hold - supposedly the hardest problem Rob had ever set in competition (which, like most sensationalist statements, sounds more exciting than it actually is). Justin Bumtree changed the foot sequence and unlocked the move, and it was on... Writing about climbing problems in a comp on a climbing wall is pretty dull, so lets leave out the hundred and thirty nine goes it took to attain my high point, but suffice to say, everyones shouting, I'm wobbling - eyeballing the finishing jug, throwing for it - oh god - I got it, SCHLIPP! woops! back on the mats. The effort (both mental and physical) required to get to the top but not do the problem was the final straw. I gave up and went home. Score - 135 pts. Think that means I won that round.
Having retired from international competition glory I feel the pressure to perform is off. Its great. I had a lovely time last night - yapping to people, doing some fun problems etc etc. Crimping caused the split, which would now be more accurately described as a finger canyon, to open more - which is bad. I thought it looked quite healed, so I tried to climb without tape, which was almost certainly a mistake.
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