I went with CUMC to our "varsity" competition against Oxford today. The thing was, though, that Warwick University has quite a decent climbing wall. So we used that, rather than trying to work something out at Oxford or Cambridge, but that meant that we had to negotiate with Warwick. Which meant that we had to let them compete with us.
So, we all had three routes we had to try, and five boulder problems.
For the girls, I flashed the first two routes (the second of which was the same as men's #1). So did at least two other girls -- one from Oxford and one from Warwick. On the third route (which was the same as men's #2) I got to the ninth clip -- and they scored you based on the number of clips you made. We got one try each, so I got a score of 90. So did the Warwick girl (the Oxford girl only got about 60 or 70, I think). So, going into the bouldering half, I was tied with the Warwick girl.
On the five boulder problems, everyone got three attempts. You got 50 points if you sent on first try, 30 on second, and 20 on third. So, I flashed them all. The fifth one was a tricky traverse (that was the same as men's #2). Which was good -- it meant that I got a perfect 250, for a total score of 500 (the two routes I flashed were worth 80 each). Meanwhile, I didn't actually see the Warwick girl on the boulder problems, but she apparently only got halfway along the traverse for half-points, and didn't finish it within the allotted three tries. So, I won! I got 500, Warwick-girl got second with 475, and the Oxford girl got about 440. Meanwhile, for boys, Ben-from-Colorado won. So, I got a pink Red Chili chalk bag that Nick is inherting, as well as a pair of Red Chili shoes that I need to actually choose a model of, and order. Which involves getting email addresses from people and stuff. So that may be a bit of a hassle, especially because I don't particularly like Red Chilis. But I'll do it. Although, if anyone is dying for a pair of Red Chilis, maybe we can work out a little deal...
However, even though Ben and I won, to add up the team scores they took the top 2 girls and top 4 boys from each team. And Ben and I apparently didn't make up for the rest of the Cambridge team compared to Warwick. So Oxford got ~1900 team points, Cambridge got ~2100 points, and Warwick got ~2600 points. So Warwick won the overall competition, but for the official "varsity" OUMC-CUMC match, Cambridge won. Go us!
Of course, at the end, I was belaying Nick on something (since he had been very patient with me all day), and using the GriGri ... which is just bad news in England. Once again I got lectured on GriGri use by a person at the gym. This one did want me to use the new technique, and attempted to demonstrate it to me on the rope I had been using ... and struggled to pull rope through (it was a fatty). But he pretended he wasn't struggling. ARGH. And then I watched him belay someone else later on with a GriGri. He was effectively using the new method, which was good, but it was a skinny rope, so I wasn't too impressed. And then when the person fell off, they certainly crashed back into the wall ... because Mr. Bear Rock had committed Eugene's sin #2 -- he didn't jump. And he was on the large side. So there.
But despite the GriGri issues, it was still a good day. I may just use Nick's Jaws from now on.
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3 comments:
Go you! I tried the "new method" and thought it was dumb. It's supposed to stop people from just letting go of the brake strand when they're not feeding, but they've just replaced that dumb thing with another dumb thing, which will probably just result in Keller yelling that he's getting short-roped. I also wanted to gripe about the continuous lowering thing--fine for a redpoint attempt, followed by a good tantrum/sulk on the ground, but absolutely no good for working a route unless you have a jetpack!
You know what else you don't have in America? "Invigilators." You have "proctors" instead. I got made fun of when I got here and asked if I was going to invigilating the chemistry students for their exam. Someone seemed to think it was a dirty word or something.
invigilate? I don't think they are even that silly in England - must be the French Canadian influence.
Go Nika - good think Katie Lamb wasn't passing thru - would have been bad to have a 12 yaer old win.
I think you should keep the pink chalk bag and give Nick the Red Chillies - they are good for fat feet anyway. Kyle McCabe likes them.
Well with the continuous lowering thing, the ideal application for it is flash/onsight format comps where that's exactly what's supposed to happen ... one fall and you're done.
Haha, I was just talking about invigilators on Friday! I read something about our exams at the end of the year, and it mentioned "invigilators," and I asked Nick, "what ARE those???". So that was my first run-in with the concept of invigilators.
At the moment, I'm just trying to collect email addresses to then order the Red Chilies. I still have no idea what kind I should get.
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