Losing

It’s that time again! The International Competition Season is upon us once more, and it starts with Salt Lake City.

As you can probably tell from the title, I ended up missing the gold. I fell one hold below Hannah (the gold medalist). Before I go on, I’d like to make one thing clear: I couldn’t be more proud of Hannah. She’s been training super hard and has come a very long way in her climbing journey. It’s been great to watch her training journey all these years.

That said, I wasn’t happy. I wasn’t upset about getting second, I was upset about the way or reason that I fell so early. The finals route for RP1 was set on what’s called an arette (think of an outer corner). Arettes are one of the few things I actively avoid because I can’t turn my feet inwards to get good purchase on a foot hold. I’ve been working on that, but I still have a very hard time with it.

The part of the route that threw me went around an arette. But what’s worse is that the foot that was given was also a pocket. Pocket feet are as bad as arettes because I also don’t have good ankle control. The good news is that there were two different ways to get up: I could throw my left foot around the arette into the pocket, or I could get my foot onto a really high foot hold and push up on that without being able to use higher hand holds to help me get up. Turns out, I could do neither of those things. I tried the high foot and only had a side pull that was about the height of my hip, so I couldn’t use my arms to help, and my legs just aren’t strong enough to pull off a move like that.

That said, I’m happy about how the comp went. Competitions feel to me like a way to showcase all of the training that was done over the previos year. It’s also a great way to find new and exciting things to train. Every time I fall off a competition route, whether I win or lose, I learn something.

Here are some examples:

Last year, 2024, I got 4th place at the comp in Salt Lake City. I had tied with two other people in both qualifiers and finals and would’ve ended up taking second place if not for one move. I needed to campus to the next hold, but from where I was it looked like too far of a pull and I weasn’t confident that I could pull it off. Had I tried it, I probably would’ve been okay. Even if I missed, I would’ve gotten a plus and secured second place. Instead, we tied for 2nd, so the results came down to the amount of time it took each of us to get to where we were on the wall. I am a particularly slow climber, so ended up in 4th. That comp taught me that me that I need to train my campusing even more, and that I need to trust that my arms will figure it out.

The year before that, 2023 I actually won the SLC competition against someone I never thought I could out climb. I fell due to not being able to span a gap in an inner corner (also known as a dihedral), but was able to secure gold because the 2nd place person ended up slipping two holds below me. That comp taught me to trust my climbing more, because you never know what will happen when you get to finals.

The year before that, 2022, I ended up in 5th place. I’d missed 4th by falling 3 holds below the person who got 4th place. This was the same year that I’d gotten my first win at Nationals, so I was convinced that I had done enough training to at least make finals. Having missed it, I ended up feeling very upset. I had gone into that comp feeling like I had to beat the other people in my category. I’ll admit I thought I was owed the opportunity to get into finals. That comp taught me to view competions differently. No one owed me anything. Everyone who attended that competition trained to be there. We had each earned the results that we got. Rather than focusing on what I think I was owed, I needed to focus on how I could improve my training even more. That lesson helped a lot, because I ended up winning silver at the next two comps that same year.

Now back to this competition: I walked away with a silver medal, and gained new training focuses. We have a month between now and the next World Cup in Innsbruck Austria, so I have time to get my legs stronger and to continue to work on inner and outer leg rotation. I don’t know what’s going to happen nex, but man am I excited to find out. Stay tuned to see what happens!

Anyway, here’s all of the results of the competition.

And here’s the YouTube video of the finals round.

Enjoy!