British Team Selection

Yippee, I’ve been selected for the 2013 British Team. 

We had a team selection competition at the Biscuit Factory in London on the 9th of February.  The British Squad battled it out to get in the top four and make the team.  There’s a video from the day here.  We competed in two rounds on the day, with our performance in both rounds being taken into consideration.  We were also assessed by the team specialists as part of the selection day, including the nutritionist, sports psychologist, chiropractor and physiotherapist.

Sorry for not blogging in ages.  I’ve been training and didn’t think I had anything interesting to say!  Then everything got quite ‘epic’ for a while prior to and during team selection…

I said I was going to practice being dynamic, I didn’t.  Well not as much as I should have.  I am practicing now.  I was doing a high volume of climbing in my conditioning phase of training.  Then strong controlled moves to go with my strength phase.  I mixed it up a bit, but not enough to keep my head in the right place for dynamic moves.  I let it get to me that I hadn’t entered my power (dynamic) phase of training prior to selection and fretted about it.  Your head can do a lot of damage to your climbing.

Coupled with my head being in the wrong place, I had managed to tie myself in knots – big solid back and neck knots.  As part of my training I have been doing NIBL (Northern Indoor Bouldering League), local league competitions and the occasional other competition such as Rockover’s ROCfest 2013.  As these comps are used for training, I don’t rest up for them.  

ROCfest was the week before team selection.  Qualification was fun, but hard.  I bashed my thumb on the penultimate qualification problem that I tried.  It hurt but seemed to work, so I battled on.  Excitingly, I qualified in joint second with Mina and Leah.  Unfortunately, I ran out of beans in the final on two relatively jug like holds in a roof on the second problem.  I couldn’t hold on anymore.  This hasn’t happened in a long time.  I’d done quite a lot of training the day before including fingerboarding, swimming speed play, and a gentle social climb.  In hindsight this was definitely too much!  It was frustrating not being able to do moves my head was telling me I could.  I ended up in 5th.

The following morning my thumb was a bruisy brown colour and really swollen.  Arghh. Bad timing with selection so close.  A quick trip to the Minor Injuries Clinic confirmed that it was soft tissue damage.  No broken bones at least. Phew.

Along with my thumb, my arms and legs were feeling tweaky.  I had an arm and leg massage rather than my usual back massage due to this.  Big mistake.  My arms and legs were tweaky because my back had got so knotty.  I didn’t find this out until after I had climbed on selection day.  For me selection was a day where my arms wouldn’t lock, I had no bounce, I was hesitant and felt tired and emotional.  I still wanted to make the grade.  I battled and just about pulled it out the bag.  I was really happy to make the top four, but disappointed to not have a fully functioning attempt at the problems.

I had a dynamic climbing coaching session with Dave Mason a few days after selection.  I had lots of massage too.  What a transformation.  I felt like a butterfly instead of a slow caterpillar!  Dave’s coaching session was good.  I was bouncing around without hesitation and I came away feeling on top of the world.

After the emotional rollercoaster fortnight it was time for a well deserved break.  Snowboarding (a change is as good as a rest).  Sleep, eat, snow, eat, snow, sunshine, eat.

Here’s some photo’s and a video from the last few months.

 

Les Arcs 2013 from Peter Jeffery on Vimeo.

Thanks to Craig Bailey (muscles photo whilst battling at ROCfest), Ellie Howard with John Ellison’s camera (CAC), Aidan Cross, Kate Wilkinson (Stanage Plantation , Bullworker) and Peter Jeffery (snow video).