"You can't always send what you want, but if you try sometimes you just might find you send what ya need"

There were a lot of things to be gleaned from the comp at Stone Gardens last weekend. The first and most important is that the old man division is not a bunch of blue hair old timers on their last leg. The top geezer would have place 11th in the Open division and was almost 700 points ahead of second, Statistically speaking I achieved 2 of 3 of my goals coming up with a top 10 finish.

The comp went something like this... Arrive early and hear the rules blah blah blah and then the comp gets started. Never having climbed in one of these 3 ring circus's I was pretty keen to sit back and watch. I had some help from Liam who was the only other person I knew and was climbing in the advanced division. (Congrats on finishing in the $)

I came out slow doing a few 200 point problems and looking at a lot of 5 and 6 hundo problems. I honed in on  400 and 500 pointers on the wave wall that didn't look bad. Most everyone was eager to jump on stuff but losing a point for every attempt led me to what I would think was a bit wiser approach. I watched. And there you have the basis of my whole strategy. Go slow climb hard and be smarter. After pulling beta on the 2 pretty straight forward problems I flashed them both. Bingo I'm off and running and things look pretty good. (Side note Ben could not flash these on Monday night which can only mean that I am stronger than him)

I went up to the front wall next pulling a second go of a 495 problem after foot dabbing onto another route like a bouldering idiot. No worries though I spied a very granite-esque crimper route in the high 5s that several old geezers had fallen off. I burned 3 goes on it falling off the top move each time. I decided to "save it for later" and moved into the cave room by the ropes. I found the easiest 600 pointer that started with a short dyno and got it on the "jumping Jack flash" attempt. (Big props to coach Sam for the encouragement on this problem. Unfortunately Coach Ben was at a Barbara Streisand concert in Canada and couldn't attend or maybe I would have done better. Glad you finally got to see Babs though buddy)

Basically from here things fell apart. I couldn't send the 600 pointer that should have gone on the 45 degree up front and after 3 burns on it didn't have the juice to finish the 400 either. The highlight of the last hour was watching this guy blow the last hold of the 600 pointer and go flying over Liam and I spotting. Only a highlight because the guy was fine albeit a little shakin.  I ran out of juice in the the last hour and got stuck with one of my earlier 290 scores. Later looking at it I would have needed to replace it with a 600 and added something big or at least all 600s. Apparently the sweet spot for old man climbing is V6ish.

Who knew there were a whole slew of Blues's out there. A comp climber I am not but, I did have fun and get a moderately cool design printed on a shitty tee shirt(seriously the neck is a size bigger than the shirt SG, next year no cutting corners) oh and this beautiful sticker...

Gratuitous promo(Mammut feel free to send me one of those sweet chalk purses for review at a later date)

Some silliness from the finals below in the video. I was going to watch them but drank beer instead because that's how old men roll.