World Cup Kranj ...

Well I am sitting here in my Hotel in Kranj right now, thinking about what happened over the past three days and I am pretty disappointed.. long story short, I somehow got sick the day before the comp and continued to be really sick on the entire plane ride over here. I was hoping it would somehow subside by the time qualifiers came around, but the day of qualis I woke up feeling the worst yet, with a fever, an upset stomach, and absolutely no energy to climb. At that point I realized it was over, there was no point in even trying to climb since I should just be resting up trying to recover. But whatever, since I am in Slovenia I figured I might as well just go for it, why not.. well it turned out as expected, and after about 10 moves I ran out of energy and fell on both routes. I still somehow beat 20 people though, not that it matters at all.

This is probably the most unlucky I've ever been with a competition.. I spent over two months training for it non-stop, preparing in every way possible and focusing everything (literally everything) around doing well. Two weeks ago I got mildly sick, and getting really worried I went to the doctor and explained that I had a comp coming up in two weeks and it is absolutely VITAL that I don't get sick until then. The doctor gave me a long list of things to do and vitamins to take in order to not get sick, and I followed her instructions 100%. Well it seems like fate was just wasn't with me on this one, and maybe this much preparation put way too much stress on me which caused me to get sick in the end... who knows, I'm not a phychologist or a doctor.. all I know is, it feels pretty bad to have so much effort be thrown away like that (I know I sound like Patxi from Progression) and to make it worse I don't see what more I could have done to prevent it.

Oh well, maybe this type of serious training isn't the thing for me, or maybe I just got really unlucky and it won't happen again.. we'll see! Hopefully the latter!

Well enough about me.. for Paul things went a little better, although he also felt pretty worn down from all the traveling we had to do. The day of the comp, he seemed more tired then ever and since this was his first lead competition ever, this made him even more nervous before climbing. On the first route he climbed solidly through the first crux, but at the second crux he made a mistake and forgot to bring his right foot high for one of the moves, and tried to jump to a hold and fell. On the second route, he also climbed really well but then got really nervous at a clip and decided to go to the next hold, but once again forgot to bring his foot to the right foothold and fell. He ended up 30th, which in my opinion is an incredible result for someone's first World Cup (and first lead competition in his life) !!

Overall I was very impressed with Paul's climbing.. he never fell because he was too pumped, just made some basic mistakes that everyone is expected to make in their first competition. After watching him on the wall, I am sure that he has the physical level of all the other strongest climbers, just needs a lot more experience with onsighting and competing in lead comps. I think if he sticks with the training and does a couple more World Cups, he will be making finals in no time !

As for me, I'm not sure where my future is.. in comps or on rock .. one is a lot more secure then the other if anything, but I am still syked for the comps and hopefully this misfortune won't ruin my syke too much!

I did, however, end up bringing my HD Camera so keep an eye out on Dead Point Mag for a video of this event!