Yesterday was my first day back in Nice after the Serre Chevalier competition. About the finals – it was supposed to be an after-work format but because of the bad weather they canceled it and made the finals onsight. This was bad news for me because I was sure that my pattern of doing good in qualifiers and bad afterwords would continue. In the finals I fumbled one of the easier moves on the route and fell pretty low, taking the last place. Im pretty sure I could have done much better, maybe not in terms of what place I got but rather how well I could have done on the route. Competitions for me are much more of a psychological challenge then physical, and I think that this is what I need to train more for the upcoming World Cups. Of course I am nowhere near as strong as the top competitors and still need to get much stronger, but all in all my biggest problem so far this season seems to be a lack of focus and misreading sequences. Im not sure how to train this, other then by doing lots of onsighting, but the weird thing is this never seems to be a problem outside of competitions. Perhaps I just need more experience, and the only way to do so is by competing more and more.
But anyway, after the competition Andrea took off to Spain to train for the Youth World Championships and I went back to Nice to climb in Les Gorges du Loup. Yesterday was a crazy day at the cliff – I showed up and already there were quite a few strong climbers there, including Tomas Mrazek. Then a few minutes later none other then Mr. Chris Sharma, Dani Andrada, and Daila showed up. Then another hour or so later Magnus arrived. So all in all there were about five world class climbers present. Quite a day! Chris warmed up by trying “Kinematix” 9a, nearly flashing the first part of the route which is 8c. He wasn’t too syked because of the chipped holds so he then tried to onsight an 8c and fell on the last hard move, 40 meters up. Dani started trying Inga, 8c+/9a and worked out the moves pretty fast. It was pretty surprising to see them here and it was obvious that the routes here aren’t much of a challenge for them. I’m not sure how long they will stay but it will be interesting to see what they will get done.
Me and Magnus started trying “Total Eclatch” 8c and worked out the moves on it pretty fast. I found some really nice beta and I think as soon as I can do the bottom boulder it will go quick. I also put my draws in “Ultimate Sacrifice” 8c+ and worked out the moves. It felt much easier then it had last year and I also think that it can go pretty fast, as long as it doesn’t rain. This is usually the first route to get wet, and it has been raining a lot this season, so hopefully it will stay dry. And finally I also tried “Quenelle Trophy” 8c and it also felt much easier then last year, so all in all I now have three projects to try to get done. A lot of the other routes I want to try (Abysse, Triptik Tonic, etc) are really wet so Ill have to wait at least a week before trying them.
