Yesterday I went to sleep at 11 P.M. I slept well and today I woke up with lots of energy. It was the day of Dust powered by Moon climbing, which is an open boulder competition at Monk Bouldergym.
In the morning I did groceries at a local supermarket and fixed myself a nice breakfast. I believe it’s important to eat well before a competition because I know I won’t take many rest moments. Anyway, I stuffed my bag with climbing gear, ate some more fruit, filled my bidon with Powerbar cranberry fluids and recharged my digital camera. Then I peddled my way to Monk in 5 minutes. It’s so nice to live close near this climbing gym. I was ready to have some fun at Monk!
I entered the bouldergym somewhat past afternoon and there was already a huge line to get a topo guide. I was so psyched to climb new boulders today, I don’t know why. Once I received my topo guide and changed my clothes, I was running back and forth to warm up.
This wall is asking to be climbed. This wall is making me happy, its filled with colourful holds! I checked out what grades are set in these walls and figured that I should come up with a plan to climb all of this. I know it will be crowded and the holds will be dirty very soon. More than 200 people signed up for today! So I warmed up with a few easy boulders followed by a few hard boulders at the competition wall. I noticed that the hard boulders took me too much energy, which means that I’m not properly warmed up. I want to prevent an injury on my fingers, so I’ll just take it easy and come back to this wall later.
I ran back to the other walls. Meanwhile it was very crowded and most of the time you just have to wait. My goal for today was climbing a lot of boulders, including hard / severe boulders. Where ever I spotted an empty wall, that’s where I was going to send a boulder.
I had to stop myself. Not because I was tired but because I needed a shoe break! Who isn’t familiar with that? I was wearing my climbing shoes for 2 hours and my feet started to hurt. I guess it was a good time to take a break and record a video.
So now you know the definition of crowded. I ate a banana and started rushing again through the climbing gym. I was warm enough to send hard boulders at the competition wall. Even though it was crowded, I still managed to flash a few problems. It’s nice to watch how other people come up with the best solutions so I could copy the sequence. It saved me lots of attempts haha.
I kept staring at the clock. It was a race against time to send as much boulders as I can. I only had one hour left. I managed to climb most hard graded boulders. Now it was time to finish the easy boulders. Well, I think I succeeded quite well. I did my very best and I don’t have much skin left on my fingers, however I sent 80 boulders out of 85 yeah!
Before I handed in my score form, I made a nice snapshot. It was nearly 6 P.M. and I was a bit on the late side of handing in my score form. Anyway, I was curious if I ended up in the top 5. Today I met some good climbers which I haven’t seen before. I just wonder about their score.
Not much later the price ceremony started. In the category Best man of the day, 2 German guys ended the third and on the second place. Now comes the big moment, who is the best man of the day, who climbed 8 most difficult boulders? And then Kim shouted my name! Yeah, this feels good. Finally I got rewarded for the boulders. I received 8 bags of Moon chalk of which 5 bags I threw away in the audience. Yeeehaa!
And the final category, Most sent boulders by a man. I was so hoping to win this award. Unfortunately this award went to a German guy, who sent 78 boulder problems. Well done and I’m happy for you. Next time I’ll try to hand in my score form on time.
I had a good time at Monk Bouldergym today. Thank you all for your effort to organise this event. I won my first big competition and it’s a good start of 2011!
Update: View the complete final scores here.
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