Senior World Cup Kranj by Connor Byrne

I was worried how I would perform as my hectic life has made doing all the training I want difficult.  However at least this was well timed for a few days away as it was reading week, so I would not miss too many lectures.  I gave Luke a lift to Stanstead on the Thursday night, to fly out on the Friday.  Friday night the running orders were announced and I was to be first up, with the difference in time I was to be competing at 8am UK time.

Senior qualifiers

I had a good read of what would be my first route (2^nd qualifier), the plan was to go from the orange pocket, crossing left onto the crimp, then going right out to a sloper, then turning the left crimp to an undercut and finally crossing right to another sloper in the roof.  I was such an idiot, when I got to the first sloper I tried to left shoulder to the sloper in the roof – this was really stupid, it was too hard to undo my mistake and I fell.  How often do I make silly mistakes!  I was really disappointed; I passed the beta onto the rest of the team. I just had to focus on my other route.  This went much better, I stuck to my route reading and I could give useful beta to a decent height to the rest of the team.  I ended up 33^rd on this route, but 49^th overall.  It’s so frustrating knowing I have the fitness (so better nutrition is working), it’s just getting the brain to work.  Hopefully next year I will put two decent performances together at one of these comps.

For a lead climber I have been busy taking part in the Northern University Boulder Series (NUBS), I have done two of these rounds so far, my second round was an improvement on my first, (better route reading).

This weekend I took part in the Plywood Masters Bouldering Competition, and completely shocked myself by making the finals.  I was really worried about how hard the problems would be in the final, however I surprised myself again and finished 5^th overall.