It’s been more than three weeks since last round of the Blocfest bouldering competition. It took place on the 8th of December, 2012 at the Castle Climbing in London. A wrap-up summary should be posted earlier, but I’ve been lazy (training hard, writing little) and the Christmas break kept me busy shopping, cooking and driving. Finally, developing of the hundreds of Blocfest photos taken by Pantera took me ages.
It was my first Blocfest round and second round of the Blocfest 2012⁄2013 edition. So, my memories are fresh as from yesterday, about almost every problem I attempted. I have a a few bouldering competitions behind my belt (SIBL, King of the Mezz, CWIF) and in most cases I systematically scored similar profile of sends: 50% of problems flashed and that was it.
The last Blocfest round seems to be a bit different and I’m hopeful this was due to three months of systematic and structured training at the Arch Climbing Wall and the Castle Climbing. At least, I did feel stronger and more solid than during the previous competitions.
The last Blocfest also proved to me that friendly bouldering comps make a fantastic opportunity to benchmark myself and observe changes not only in physical performance but mental too. It also fuels up the motivation tanks for weeks of training to come.
Long story short, I managed to flash 16 of 25 beautifully bolted-on Blocfest problems, then I sent another 4 in second go what makes 20 problems done in total. According to the comp rules, the math is this:
160 = 16 x 10 points for top in flash
+ 28 = 4 x 7 points for top in second go
-------
188 points scored of total 250 points available
Although not a top notch achivement comparing to the top three male contenders: Jon Partridge, Marcin Franiak and Matt Cousins who completed the qualifier with more than 230 points, I tend to dream that my score has a potential value of 200 points. Sweet dream! Then, after the existing finals first place on the podium went to Ondrej Nevelik, who has been taking the London scene of bouldering comps by the storm recently.
Kudos to the Blocfest Team for their hard work. Quality bouldering arrived to South East!
During the competition at the Castle, Pantera was very busy visiting all the corners of the event and capturing the moments of fun and effort, focus and sweat. Here is the complete gallery: BlocFest 2012-2013 - Castle Climbing:
All photos published under Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike license and copyright held by Aneta Parchanska.
Mike from the Blocfest team posted a nice video clip at Vimeo:
Blocfest 2012-13 at the Castle from BlocFest on Vimeo.
I can’t wait the third round of the Blocfest in the Reading Climbing Centre in two weeks time.
Meanwhile, I’ll check the monthly bouldering competition at the Arch this Friday.
