So the past week in Rodellar was pretty eventful, with all my focus directed towards climbing my two projects. After a couple of good tries on both, the weather really started to heat up and consequently I started climbing worse and worse. When I climb in an area for a long time and only try specific projects, I always end up not climbing enough and slowly losing strength and motivation. After one day where I couldnt even get through the bottom boulder anymore, I realized I needed a change before I could start climbing well again. That weekend, there was a bouldering comp in Hungary, the Ambrosia Bouldering Contest, so I figured it would be a fun and useful detour from Rodellar to go compete and see what happens. Since I havent climbed in the gym for a while, I wasnt expecting anything in the comp other then a good time and lots of climbing to get me back in shape. So on Thursday I left Rodellar and went to train in Esparaguerras for a day, a little city near Barcelona where my sister and many other strong Spanish climbers train. After a long and hard ´a muerte´ training session, I took a rest day then flew to Hungary to compete in the comp. The qualifiers was a redpoint format with 20 problems to try in 2 hours, which was really cool because you could get a lot of climbing in instead of just doing four or five boulders, like in most boulder comps. I ended up climbing all 20 qualifiers which put me in first place for the semi finals! In the semi finals there were 5 boulder problems and you had four minutes to climb each of them, more like a world cup format. The problems were really cool and I ended up climbing all 5, which once again put me in first place for the finals. In the finals there was a really interesting format with 6 boulder problems, 2 of which you had 4 minutes to try, 2 where you had 2 minutes, and 2 onsight boulders. This was nice because it tested many differnent skills with a variety of problems, and also upped the pressure on the last 2 boulders, where you only had one try on each. I ended up flashng the first boulder, falling before the bonus on the 2nd, and flashing all the rest of the finals problems, which once again put me in first place. The prize was none other then a hefty 1000 Euros, which will be really useful for the rest of my trip here in Spain!! Overall I thought the comp was really fun and had lots of interesting ideas and boulder problems, so I am very syked to come back and compete next year.
After the comp, I spent another day in Hungary training hard in the gym, mostly on short powerful circuits and boulder problems. Later that day I flew into Barcelona and met up with my friend Seth in the evening, and after a crazy night of partying I drove to Rodellar the next morning, syked again and feeling in much better shape after the mini gym-excursion. Yesterday I was supposed to rest, but after ariving in Rodellar I got so syked that I headed straight to the Ventanas to try my project again. Although I was tired from the drive and the party the night before, I warmed up and suprised myself by linking Los Borrachos from the 5th move until the end! I also got on Los Inconformistas and did the moves in the crux, which also felt a lot better than before. I can definately feel a big difference in my climbing after the training sessions, and now have no more excuses not to finish up the two routes. Last weekend, while I was gone, Felipe stepped it up and finally satched up Los Inconformistas after falling 7 times at the last hard move! Very impressive, as he climbed his first 8c+ only a month ago! Muy bien bitxoo!! Now that everyone is climbing well, hopefully it will be my turn to step it up and finally get something hard done, so for now, intentos y motivacion a muerte!
