As part of my training for OCR, about a year ago I started to add in bouldering to my training to help develop my grip strength and as an activity to do on my active rest days. I quite quickly realised that I found bouldering much more exciting than top rope. I had found an activity that combined fitness and problem solving and every time I went I had so much fun! So, I signed up for a monthly membership for Boulder World (It’s only $60 for the month to climb as much as you’d like and I thought that was very reasonable) and have pretty much been bouldering once a week since then. I realised that I had quite good upper body strength and I could muscle my way through the easier climbs. However, the minute I needed to use any form of technique I was still pretty awful. I became an expert at spotting people who were better than me and asking them kindly to talk me through the route and even had a couple of lessons from a more experienced route setter (If you’re looking to have some lessons in Singapore drop me a message and i’ll pass you on his number, he’s an amazing climber and a great coach!). Right now I am at the point where at Boulder World I can often complete an orange route and I can sometimes get started on a white route but I have only successfully completed two… ever (I am also not sure what this translates to in the actual world of bouldering, but orange is basically the 4th most difficult colour). With so many routes still very much out of my grasp I fear I am a long way off being ready to take on a climbing competition…. Yet here I am.

Doing my best to pretend to look like I know what I’m doing…

How I spend a lot of my time in the bouldering gym…

Pre-Competition Thoughts
I thought I would write this blog in two halves because it is currently 2 days before the competition and I still have no idea what to expect. To give some context, it is a team competition, which makes it slightly better in the sense that I am not attempting it alone, but also much worse because 3 other people are relying on me. I am stepping in for a friend because it is a requirement to have a female on the team so I am just hoping I don’t make a total embarrassment of myself. When I asked for some information about the event I was told “Ah, don’t worry about the details, just turn up and have fun.”

Now… if you’ve ever spent time with me you’ll know there are 2 things I am not capable of doing. 1) It is impossible for me to not worry about the details. If there are details I want to know every tiny one that is available so I can obsess over each one equally. 2) If it is a competition, you’d better believe I am not there just for fun. I am there to win, even if I am hilariously underprepared and under qualified for the role. So, here is what I do know:

- The competition is a team competition featuring 4 people in the team (one of these must be female).
- Females receive double points (I do not know how I feel about this. My immediate reaction is to be annoyed and demand that I get the same amount of points as the boys. However, I fear I will need as many points as I can physically get so I am choosing to keep my mouth shut. Also, I think this is fairly typical of team bouldering competitions so if you have any experience with this I’d love to hear what you think - leave me a comment!).
- The name of the competition is SMU Gravical. And that is it! No clue on the format of the competition. I did watch a clip from a previous year where they had to do paired climbs and both climbers had to be touching throughout the whole climb… that sounds awful to me so I am hoping it’s not that!

But for now, I’ve got my climbing shoes packed, I’ve borrowed Sean’s chalk bag (I don’t ever use chalk when I climb but feel like I should at least pretend to look the part) and I’m deciding on which sports bra to wear based on which makes my back muscles look the best just in case I get high enough on a climb for a decent picture.

Post Competition Reflections

So, I survived and it was actually a lot of fun. As the day of the competition progressed I got more and more nervous and when they uploaded some videos of the routes a couple of hours before we were due to start I debated making my excuses and running away. They all looked incredibly technical and I wasn’t sure if I’d even be able to get off the floor. But, I’d signed up to help the team so I figured bailing on them a few hours out wasn’t very sportswomanly.

Arriving at the competition I was surprised by how well run it was, we registered with ease, got a top and a goodie bag and once we had our score card we were on our way. This was something that was consistent with the entire competition and every staff member I encountered was helpful and polite so thanks very much to everyone at Gravical who worked hard to put the event together. The wall had been created for the competition and was set up in a lecture hall in SMU Law School which was pretty cool. As we walked in I was really surprised to see that most of the seats were full of spectators but by this point I’d got a case of the giggles about how unqualified I was for the whole thing and I just decided to roll with it.

I hadn’t ever taken part in any kind of climbing competition but me and Sean like to watch the climbing world cups on YouTube so there was an air of familiarity and I didn’t feel like a total newbie as I knew some of the key terminology and rules. The team format worked as follows: 4 members of a team, 5 routes, 4 minutes per route to get as many tops as you can between you. There were more points on offer if you flashed the route (getting to the top in your first go) and I was correct about girls getting double points. There were also ‘zones’ marked on the walls. This is an area, normally about half way through the climb, that if you get to it, you then get some points for doing so.

I made it to the top of the first climb!

The pace of the competition was crazy. We had a quick warm up and briefing and then got ourselves ready on the wall. As I mentioned, each team had 4mins on each climb but as one team finished the next one moved in. There was no transition time so the second you finished one climb, the timer had begun again and if you didn’t move fast it soon ate in to your 4 minutes of climbing time. I managed to flash the first climb, although it had looked much easier from the floor than I had been expecting. But, this gave me hope that I wasn’t entirely doomed. Everyone in our team completed this route within our time and we moved on to problem 2 feeling pretty chuffed.

However, things got pretty hard pretty fast and the next climb featured an overhang plus some pretty crazy holds where you had to stuff two fingers in to the hold with both hands then somehow transition to the final hold, which in my opinion was basically just a slick piece of plastic 100miles away. I managed to get the zone after a few tries but resided myself to not having the finger strength to hold on and transition with just two fingers so I made the call to save my grip for the future problems.

Climb 2, 3 & 4 progressed in much the same way. The head of our team was the strongest climber so he attacked each problem first and then the rest of us took it in turns to get as far as we could. I made it my aim to make sure I got to the zone to get some extra points and I managed to do this on 4/5 climbs which I was pretty happy with. To be honest the climbs were just a bit too far from what I am capable of and with a race in 2 weeks I could feel myself being wary when I probably needed to take a few more risks. But at the end of the day my main sport is Spartan and this was just for fun. 4 minutes passed SO fast on all of the climbs and it was hard to find a balance of taking the time to ensure you didn’t make stupid mistakes and not wasting the little time you had and I felt the pressure even more with 3 other people trying to do exactly the same.

Coming in to the final climb it was a slabby wall with a few tiny holds on a number of volumes. You had to throw yourself at the wall to gain your balance then touch the tiny start to begin. It took me a few attempts to position myself right to find my balance but once I got the hang of it I managed to progress up the wall, trying my hardest not to fall off. I was (very slowly) making the final transition to the top of the climb when the buzzer went off - my time had run out - but I was so close! It totally didn’t matter and much to my disappointment I would have to walk away from that uncompleted as the timer for the next team to begin had already buzzed.

And that was it, almost as quickly as it had begun it was over. The whole completion lasted just over 20minutes and boy it had been intense. With so many teams competing and some excellent climbers it was clear that we didn’t need to worry about the final and I had to shoot off to catch a plane so I am not actually sure if there was a separate final or if the team with the most points were just crowned the winners.

When you’re so close to the top and the time runs out…

But, all in all it was a great experience and I am glad that I got to be a part of it. It was interesting to check out the competitive side of a different sport in real life and I liked the fact it was a team effort. (Update: we actually came 35/48 so I think that’s pretty respectable for a fun competition).
It has also given me some specific types of climb to practice when I’m on the bouldering wall and made me realise that in the year I have been climbing I have come a really long way! I won’t say never on another competition but I’d want to put some more time in to preparing it so that I could really be in it to win it and put my competitive nature fully to the test!

Jessie x