Kranj WC + A bit of waffle

Crew

Although I had a fantastic start to the year, my luck didn’t really stretch out through the rest of the year. I had an amazing summer; stayed with some amazing people and experienced so much… but I wasn’t really training. No training = no improvement, and improvement was what I needed if I wanted to climb well. I had a disappointing run of competitions after Edinburgh: A couple World Cups with performances I’m not too proud of and a few European Youth Boulder Cups, which were average. I came home from summer having enjoyed myself but mainly outside the comps - pretty much because in my opinion I was climbing rubbish and getting poor results. But I managed to find some psyche from somewhere and was ridiculously motivated to train my hardest so I could ultimately come home from the World Youth Championships having made another final and potentially getting a medal. As I’m sure you’re aware, worlds couldn’t have been further from what I was hoping for. All in all, the trip wasn’t that fun, my climbing wasn’t great and I came home extremely upset and demotivated. The next few weeks were really hard for me; I know it sounds pathetic to be this upset about a few competitions but I guess it shows how much they mean to me. I was not psyched at all, especially for competitions. So doing some training before the BLCCs was hard. You’re probably wondering why I’m going on about all this but I think it’s important, as it’ll help you understand my head in the run up to, and during kranj. After I found out I was going to kranj I was dreading it… I didn’t want to perform badly; the disappointment from the previous comps and Worlds had really hit me hard. I had also wanted to take a break and rest so I’d hopefully be itching to get back to the wall again soon. I decided that I would just try and have fun and enjoy climbing in Kranj… not my normal way of looking at comps! So I went out with the team, aiming to have a good time.

We arrived the day before the comp and I actually wasn’t feeling nervous… the nerves did catch up with me on the walk to the wall the next day but I’ve had more intense nerves before. I think I wasn’t as nervous because I really love Kranj; the wall, the warm up area, the competition, even the hotel… just everything about trips to Kranj. It’s pretty cool to be staying in the same hotel as all the other teams, and it was nice to have some other youth climbers I knew from the youth circuit competing. 

I was up 1^st… dun dun dunnnn! Most people absolutely hate being out first but I actually I was kinda happy. For me it meant I’d put less pressure on myself whilst sitting in the chair or on the actual route itself. I think I’ve been out first maybe once and that was in a youth comp, but I am always comparing myself to others and putting pressure on myself to climb as high as the people before me on the route. This time, I had no pressure and I was able to just climb the route and not be influenced by others. I really enjoyed the route; I think it was quite well suited to me and I managed to climb up to about 6 moves from the top. I was really pleased with my climb… though I think I could’ve got a few moves higher if I had seen the beta for the move I fell on. But there are always ‘ifs’ and ‘buts’!  I had a good score on the first route, leaving me in 16th place. (you can watch R1 below). All I needed was a decent climb on the second route and I’d qualify for semis, something that had felt so far away earlier in the season. Sometimes you get those routes where from the moment you step off the ground you feel uncomfortable and don’t like it… yep this was one of these routes and I knew I probably wasn’t going to climb as well as I should/wanted to. Nevertheless I managed to qualify in 19^th place. I was super pleased and looking forward to the next round.

The Semi-Final route was long. It started on one part of the wall and traversed across the gap between the two lines and went up that line and again traversed out left a bit more near the top. The bottom didn’t look too complex and I climbed it pretty well. I managed to do a mini crux of coming up into the roof, threw out to a big ball and then was a bit stuffed feet wise. I came off kicking myself  (not literally!) because I didn’t really try that hard to sort myself and just kinda gave up… something I never do! But after watching a couple other girls on it, I saw an easer way to do the move. It’s always frustrating to see people do something and make it look easy in a way you didn’t spot. But all in all I was proud of myself for going to Kranj, climbing well on my first route and making the Semi-Finals.

I’m looking forward to a nice break over Christmas and to training hard and giving it my all next year… who knows what 2015 will bring!

Thanks a bunch to my sponsors:

Lyon (La Sportiva, Petzl, Beal)

Berghaus
NuLine
Natoora
Michael and Lauren Clancy
Sports Aid
Sport England
Westway Development Trust

My Grandparents :)