Austria Recap

That’s a wrap on the second World Cup of the season! This World Cup was held in Innsbruck, Austria. Innsbruck is a small town with beautiful mountain views and one of the best climbing gyms in the world (in my opinion). The gym is called Kletterzenstrum. The walls are tall and the routes are hard. It’s always nice to go early and climb in the gym for fun.

The competition routes are even better. They’re tall and always creatively set. This year was no different. I mean, just look at this!

It’s also easier to train for, since the wall is the same every year.

Now let’s talk about the competition itself. I mentioned in my last blog post that I was having a hard time with training prior to this competition. I don’t really know why, but something had just switched off and made training into a chore. In the same post, I mentioned that I was able to pull myself out of it in the nick of time. I was able to pull out my training tools and get to work, and it paid off!

Like I said, the routes at the Innsbruck competition are always really well-set. However, that doesn’t mean that they’re easy. The RP1 routes had pretty good hands, but the movement was tricky at times. I found myself having to change my beta a few times mid climb (there’ll be a post about beta changing mid climb at a later time). I ended up not topping any of the routes, sadly, although I did get pretty far. I ran out of steam faster than I would’ve liked, and that probably had something to do with needing to change beta as I climbed.

Was the beta changing the only reason you couldn’t finish the routes?

No, it sure was not. The walls at the Innsbruck gym are longer than most of the routes I’ve ever climbed. The competition wall has the most interesting features I’ve ever seen. I’ve worked on endurance a lot over the years, but somehow it never seems to be enough for Innsbruck. We don’t have features like the ones on the wall in Innsbruck, and our walls aren’t as tall. In addition, there’s something about competitions that really tire me out. No matter how much endurance and power endurance training I do I always fall short. One other thing for this year specifically was that the heat was immense. Cerebral palsy and extreme weather conditions just don’t get along. Cold conditions locks my muscles to the point where I almost literally can’t move them. This tends to make moving pretty painful. The flipside of this is extreme heat, which was the problem I was having in Innsbruck. When it gets really hot and/or humid, my muscles take longer to listen to me. It will often take actual thought to get my legs to move. The strength is there, but moving takes so much effort that I get tired out quickly. Once the legs are over tired the arms have to take over, which results in them getting pumped faster than they otherwise would, which ultimately causes me to fall.

All that said though, I’m really happy with my performance! On both qualification routes I got almost three quarters of the way up. For finals I got a little more than halfway up. Given that I had to almost restart my training due to a mental block that I was having (as I described in my [2025-06-21-training_block.markdown] post), I would say the comp went pretty well.

Okay, so enough about me. I go to these competitions to show off my climbing on the world stage, but that wouldn’t be possible without my fellow competitiors. This time around there were much more people in the RP1 category, and you could really see all the training that people put in! Returning competitors wowed both the crowd and myself with all the improvements they’ve made over time. New people joined the competition and showed the world what they could do.

This year, there were four women from the USA in the RP1 category: Tiffany, Jackie, Hannah, and myself. Seeing their progress so far has been amazing. I was blown away by the way Tiffany learned how to use her off hand to hold onto holds in order to get the main hand up. I was amazed by the continuous progress that Hannah brought to this comp. I was so proud of Jackie. It’s her first year and she’s made finals at both World Cups that she’s been to so far. She wowed the crowd and got second place at a competition that is considered to be pretty hard, especially for beginners. The best part? We managed to pull off a full USA podium! Seriously, this competition was amazing.

Here’s the four USA RP1 competitors. From left to right we have Hannah, Jackie, myself, and Tiffany.

Here are some photos of my friends in action!

This is a photo of Jackie climbing one of the qualifier routes. Look at how she holds herself on the wall despite how overhung it is!

Here’s Hannah climbing the Finals route. Notice how she keeps her left hip in as she holds on with the right hand and reaches up with the left.

And this one is of Tiffany climbing on of the qualifier routes. She’s keeping her body close to the wall using a left-side heel hook.

Want to see how everyone in the women’s RP1 category (as well as everyone who competed) did at this competition? Find the results here.

Want to watch myself and my fellow competitors climb in the finals round? You can watch the full finals round here.

Have you been keeping up with the paraclimbing competition circuit? Have any questions, or people you’d like me to highlight? Let me know! I love spotlighting people, so if you suggest someone I’ll do my best. There will be more specific spotlight posts for people that I want to show off, so keep an eye out for those.

Happy climbing!