The 2012 SCS Open Nationals were held yet again at Movement in Boulder. This years competition went very smoothly
without any major hiccups that can sometimes unfortunately happen at these big events. Like last year, I competed
within both the sport and speed events.
Sport Qualifying
round
The format for the qualifying round was almost identical to
the way that the World Championships was held last year at least. Both the men and women were given two climbs,
flash format style. Half of the climbers
started on the first climb while the other half started on the second
climb. Once everyone was finished from
both sides they then switched climbs and moved to a rolling clock of 5 minutes to move the
event along versus the 5 minutes allotted for the first climb.
My first climb I ended up falling going for the last hold
before the anchors. I should have sent
it but I knew it was good enough for finals just as long as I did not screw it
up on the second climb. The second
qualifier was a lot of fun with a huge no hands knee bar about 5 clips in. Sadly, I was not able to utilize it as I was
not pumped enough to justify staying their for long. I then quickly climbed through the next crux,
a huge cross through to a crimp under a volume, to what I thought was another
knee bar. However it proved to be a
teaser knee bar and did not help at all.
Moving quicker now to avoid further pump for the hard finish, I traversed
left along the route, to at least for me an awkward left bump out to a
jug. For some reason my right hand was
not wanting to grip the underside of the volume which would allow me to make
the move. Instead of just going for it
anyways I decided to try the failed knee bar I had just left. If I could just get a quick second to recover
I knew I could readjust to make the move.
Sadly the knee bar didn’t want to work again, by this time I was very
pumped and ended up falling seconds later.
This little mess up ended up costing me a place in finals this
year, finishing 10th. I have
learned a lot from this event and the fact of not making finals is only more
motivation to prove myself that much more at the next event.
Qualifier #1
"Julian Boyd"
Speed
The last time I had touched the speed holds or climbed on
the speed wall was this past summer at the Arco Championships. Thankfully despite this I was able to get
back into speed climbing mode and get a Finals time of 5.91seconds for the 10 meter. I again was awarded the title for the 2nd
year in a row of “2012 Speed SCS National Champion” This was definitely I nice little boost after
not making sport finals.
Photo "Julian Boyd"
Photo "Richard Levin"
Speed Finals Video!
Now back to the gym to train on some “Rock Candy Holds” for
the 2012 Canadian Bouldering Nationals, being held in Montreal Canada April 14th
and 15h.
Thanks to everyone who came out and watched, and to all of
my Sponsors: Rock Candy Holds, Power
Bar, Jan Sport, Organic and Five Ten.
Stay tuned for the Canadian Nationals write up!.
Check out the amazing highlight video from LT11 from finals, they really outdid themselves this time!!