What I do...: The Heist

I was very fortunate to be part of the Heist competition held at Central Rock Climbing Gym in Watertown.

For those of you that haven't heard about it,

It was an event organized by FEMALES

set by FEMALES

for FEMALES

I was the head route setter and going into the event I didn't really know what to expect. I have been the head setter/organizer of small local competitions but nothing of this caliber. The days leading up to the event I felt pretty organized, focus but anxious. I just wanted Monday to roll around so that we could start setting for the event. At the end of the week I was very grateful to have Sydney McNair at my side.

I have learned that no big event goes without some small problems here and there. Overall things went according to plans. We fell a little bit behind Monday with having set only 22 boulders out of the 25 which was our goal. But by Tuesday night we had all 60 boulders set. Wednesday was spent on forerunnimg and setting up the finals boulders. And the bottom half of the route got set as well. Thursday we spent forerunning finals and the advance/open problems. We finished the route on Friday along with forerunning it.

It was a long and tiring week where we'd get to the gym between 10am-11am and not leave till 10pm most nights. I was especially tired because in the 3 weeks prior to the event I had been in 4 different time zones (one of which was in Europe) and I had been on 11 flights. My body was all sorts of tired!!

Saturday rolled around suddenly and everyone was coming through the door to check in and getting ready to compete. I got really nervous and for a few hours of qualifiers I found myself sitting in a rocking chair in the hold room, thinking what we should do. You see the problem started that morning, when I felt that all the open problems were maybe too easy for the field of competitiors that showed up. After qualifiers my fear became a reality and the top 8 girls sent the top 5 boulders. Luckily they didn't all flash all 5 boulders. Going into finals we had two ties to break. Two girls were tied for 1st and two were tied for 3rd.

Final's boulder #1

This was my master piece. I had to set with the heart holds from atomic. It was quite the challenge. It was a vertical, technical rock climb that I was very happy with. All the girls sent the boulder, but that's what we wanted. Luckily the boulder broke one of our ties.

Final's boulder #2

Sydney was the mastermind behind this powerful pinch fest! (Holds courtesy of teknik) Our goal was to have one of the girls get to the top. Unforunetly that didn't happened. We might have tweaked it to make it harder than it should of been. But either way it broke our final tie.

Final's route #1

I have never heard or attended an event where finals was a mixture between boulders and routes. I think it gave the event it's own little spin on things. I don't think the route could of been any better. We expected two girls to top and they did. And everyone else fell in a different place on the route. Sydney gets most of the credit for the route with a few of my ideas mixed into it.

Sunday was a day for clinics with some of the athletes along with myself. I taught a setting clinic which I think went really well. I hope that the people that took my clinic learned some valuable things that they will be able to use in the future.