Get your Head in the Game

On April 18, I competed in--and won--Thrash and Dangle Fest 2015. The next weekend, I had my worst competition since my first competition, coming in at a disappointing seventh place after hauling my mom two hours out of town to Tucson and back. My loss there was no surprise--I was battling a sinus infection. However, with two weeks until Regionals, I can't afford to be sick and to be taking time off.
(Now you're up to date.)

So, back to Thrash and Dangle. At that competition, I won a whole bunch of stuff that I can't actually use. My team is sponsored by 5.10, so I can't wear half the brands that I won stuff from. I have a certificate for any pair of Evolv shoes or approach shoes which I can't use. If you'd be interested in any pair of Evolvs 20-25% off the list price, let me know in the comments. I have yet to find someone who wants them and I haven't been in the gym in order to hang up a classified.

I'll see you after Regionals.

juliascending

This blog--for me--has mostly been competition stories and speculations about the sport. I like the theme, so instead of changing this blog, I have created a new one. This blog, juliascending.wordpess.com, is more of my everyday cycle--how I train, how I eat, recipes, workouts, sport background, my background, and other more concrete things. Trust me, you'll notice the difference. The new one is much more professional.

Here's the link again: juliascending.wordpress.com.

Catch up on my journey there, and I'll see you back here after my competition on April 18.

Stay strong and safe!
Julia

Why I Climb

There is only one reason I climb. There is only one reason I show up at the gym and train, only one reason I go running at five in the morning before school, only one reason I do sit-ups in the shower, eat clean, do a twenty-minute workout every morning I don't run, miss my high-school prom for a competition, and do everything else I do for this sport. 

I am deeply, utterly, take-your-breath-away in love with rock climbing.

A lot of people love climbing. Everyone on my team loves climbing. However, we all love it for different reasons. A friend of mine loves it for the joy of sticking hard moves. Another loves it because it puts him in a zone within which he is unstoppable. Personally, I love it for the feeling of pushing myself past the point which I thought I simply could not pass. My motto is "one more hold," because I always try to go one more hold, one more move, one more crux, one more push, until it seems that I will not hit my limit because I've already gotten through so much.

I went through a tough period during which I was struggling to determine why I was doing all that. My coaches had expectations of me that didn't align with my personal goals, and eventually I found myself climbing more to satisfy them than to keep up with myself. Then, I tried out to be on the top tier of our team, and everything changed. I was denied, and suddenly I was at a loss. If I wasn't living up to my coaches' expectations, and I wasn't living up to my own, so what on Earth was I doing? It was then that I decided I was going about it all wrong. You can't always live to please. So, with this resolution, I doubled my training, now chasing my own goal: ropes nationals. And, what do you know? As soon as this happens, I get moved up! I am now, according to my coaches, a Competitive Climber! Well, little do they know, but I moved up before that. I moved from climbing for them to climbing for myself. And look where I am now.

From our last local comp, in which I placed 2nd in my category and 3rd overall

One person's words have helped me push through certain routes, and that person is Megan Mascarenas. During ABS Nationals 2015, when she was being interviewed, she said three words that completely changed my mindset forever.

"Just stay on."

The implication is astounding. What she says is, no matter what it takes to stay on the wall, give it. If it takes certain strengths you didn't know you possessed, wield them. Do everything you can. But above all, just stay on.

That, and only that, is why I climb.

Finally, a Larger Fall

I didn't qualify to move past Divisionals in bouldering. Frankly, I've never been happier to lose a competition in my life. Don't get me wrong, I love to compete. I would have been ecstatic to move on to Nationals for bouldering. However, well... I'm a rope climber at heart.
I transitioned from bouldering training to ropes training the second I fell off of route number four at Divisionals on the weekend of January 11th. Since then, I feel like I've been training three times harder and I'm definitely three times happier. The reason?
Leading.
Rope climbing is a different type of fight from bouldering. Bouldering is twenty feet of power; ropes is sixty of on-and-off technique and endurance. It's my game. I love the kind of satisfaction that comes from clipping the anchors when you're pumped out of your mind at thirty to sixty feet in the air. My favorite training exercises include "ududus," in which you climb a route, then down-climb it, then climb it again, then down-climb again, then climb it, all without touching the ground. On lead. I am in love with that kind of endurance; the kind of endurance that forces me to not just pull my hardest but to keep me pulling for as long as humanly possible.
I figured I would outline a little of my ropes career and a little bit of why I love it so much. It started with last year's ropes season--how I qualified for not just divisionals, but nationals, and did decently there as well. It was my first year on lead, and although I'd like to say that I took to it like a fish to the water, I really did not. I was terrified of those lead "whippers" I would take, the enormous falls that result from clipping too far below yourself and then wiping off. Lead pushed me to my limits, mentally and physically. And I loved it. Bouldering is great, but only lead can push me in every way, shape, and form. So, ropes season, right now, is where I want to be.
Maybe I could have trained harder in bouldering--no, I know I could have.
But let me make one thing clear.
I will never, ever, not once, be able to say the same thing about my training for lead season.

Rope Nationals 2014

Dynamic Movement

Not many girls (in my category especially) enjoy huge, committing moves. To be fair, when I'm at the top of some highball route and you ask me to carry out an enormous awkward dyno (or if, say, I've already hurt myself falling from said move...), I won't be happy about it. But 99% of the time, big jumps are my movements. When I practiced at Psicobloc, the deep water soloing wall in Park City, Utah, I was one of few people under six feet to try the wicked 7 foot dyno on the 5.11d and one of even fewer to send the route, with its three dynos of progressively larger sizes and three-move campus finish.

I've talked about how mental climbing is. What it has come down to, at least for me, is simply arguing myself into going all-out. When I was shaking out after the second dyno of the 5.11d, looking up and to the right at my next hold, thirty-five feet above 55 degree water, I realized the logic of jumping. That high in the air, I knew that a half-hearted jump, with me holding back because of my fear of falling, would unavoidably lead to a gravity-fest. The only way to make the move was to use the potential consequence to force myself to commit, knowing that if I didn't, I would fall. The next time I got on the route, I sent it, sticking the dyno with my right hand and swinging wildly into the wall.

Well, that was exciting.

At the PRG local

Ever since then, whenever I compete red point I scope out the most dynamic routes and make sure I do them--for example, A6 at the Focus competition (see Localized: Wrists and Jumping) and 30 at a Phoenix Rock Gym local with a scary sideways lunge (which I was one of two people in the competition to send). I love it because it forces me to overcome my fears if I ever want to make it to the top.

Localized: Wrists and Jumping

Right out of the gates, I'll say I'm not a bouldering queen. Ropes are my strength. I like being up high and clipping in and taking big falls. But above my love of ropes is my love of competition; therefore, I am doing bouldering season. Last year at ABS Bouldering Regionals, I came in eighteenth. On the same note, I came in twentieth in SCS Regionals last year, which is proof of how much you can change in a year.

This morning's local competition at Focus, Mesa, was a little rough. I arrived with high expectations. Ever since Nationals, I've been training longer, harder, and better than ever before. However, I definitely didn't go into it at one hundred percent: my left wrist has been in a brace for two days, I pulled a muscle in my right shoulder, and the tendons in my right wrist have been hurting for two weeks (backstory: for a scary ten minutes, I completely lost feeling in my right hand). But either way, I decided my injuries were too minor to keep me out of the first local of the season. 

About a third of the way through the three-hour redpoint competition, my friends and I decided to try a highly committing route. I'm rating it V5-6. It was slightly overhung and the last move was a) high, at 15 feet up, and b) an awkward, painful dyno. My first attempt on it, I jumped for the last hold and fell, landing hard on--of course--my hands. My wrists took the brunt of the impact, unfortunately, and as I stood up I realized that continuing to climb might not be the best idea. Nevertheless, three minutes later I got back on the route and became one of two girls to send the route during that competition.

On A6, sticking the fateful dyno. Photo: Kyle

I did climb out the remaining two hours, but it was rough going. My wrists hurt and the gym was packed full of people. By the end of the day, I was ready to be done. I skipped out of awards, catching a ride home with a fellow team member. Through texting my coaches, however, I found out that I had placed second. I've never placed that highly in a local before, and I was psyched to represent my team and all of my extra training this way. 

Represent! Photo: Kyle

Slip, Fall, No More Chances

"Be brave. Take risks. Nothing can substitute experience."

How true that is.

Nationals was an incredibly rough competition for me. I didn't do nearly as well as I'd hoped, but if I had known my competition my expectations would have been far lower. I come from the southwest division, basically the strongest division in the United States. I placed fifth in Divisionals, leaving me confident--maybe overly so--for Nationals. My hope was to make the top sixteen after the first two days and advance to semifinals. 

Day one was a flash format. There was no iso (much to my chagrin, as I have a tradition of sleeping in the isolation rooms of major competitions). We were allowed to watch our fellow competitors and there was even a route demonstration. I climbed ninth, so I had a solid hour and fifteen minutes to warm up. I'm notoriously slow at doing that. Between traverses, I watched the route. Most of the girls I watched sent the route, with only a few falls very close to the top. 

The funny thing is, I wasn't nervous at all. National competition, you'd think I would be shaky and scared... but I wasn't. I guess you could say I was playing with house money at this point. Being realistic, I hadn't expected to make it past Divisionals, let alone do well enough to end up in the humid heat of Atlanta three weeks later. Taking all of that into perspective, I was literally only there to have fun. 

Sitting in the chair on day one. To my left is Kara.

Sitting in the (white, plastic) chair before I climbed was an interesting experience. The girl next to me, Kara, seemed just as casual and relaxed as I was. We were tied in to two different ropes, so I could jump on as soon as she came down. The girl before us kicked the sign for the seventh draw off the wall, so there was a delay as an unnecessarily large squad of national forces replaced it. 

Kara sent.

I did not.

Out of twelve, ten clips and a couple extra holds wasn't bad. But it wasn't enough. By the end of day one I was in twenty-fifth. Speed was a nightmare that afternoon: my fast run, a high nine, wouldn't have gotten me into semis even if I hadn't missed the buzzer and ended up with a low thirteen instead. Speed was over.

Day two went the same. It was the same format, although this time I climbed twenty-seventh instead of ninth. Sitting in the chair, again beside Kara, I knew I didn't have a chance at semis. Twenty people had sent the first climb. Unless I sent this one, there was no way. 

I set my hands on the wall and moved in to the starting hold. The wall was seriously overhung, and I had to lift my feet up to the first foothold which was literally a foot straight in front of me. I climbed fast, cruising the first section despite the slow, technical nature of the holds. I'd seen three people touch the top hold, most people getting to the second to last clip, and a few falls on the tenth. The seventy-foot wall loomed over me as I moved. 

I had also seen three people miss the eighth clip, so I was careful to stretch out on a side pull and clip far behind my head. The rope drag pulled me down and I was tiring quickly. Before the ninth clip, pulling myself over a lip, my hands started to slip. I did the same thing I'd done at Divisionals: rest on the hold, shake out, and think... 

It was a long whip. I'd had a lot of run from the eighth clip, and I came close to a deck, maybe five feet up. Touching the ground I looked at my hands, bleeding at the pads. My fall had been really low. Despite the whole house money thing, being at Nationals, that was bad. For a few moments I could definitely have sat down and cried. But.

I'd seen far too many people crying on the ground after their performances, too many people so obsessed with placement that they couldn't see how many people they'd beaten. I looked up and I told myself--truthfully--that I would not have been able to keep moving, so I had gotten what I'd deserved.  

Me on the day two route. The eighth clip is hanging in the top left corner.

See, coming in twenty-ninth was not bad. Out of thirty-five, yeah, that's not great. But how many people did I have to beat to get here? Hundreds? All of the people who didn't even qualify, did I beat them? I think so. Realistically, in the large scope of the world, I surpassed all expectation. I gave it my all, and that is what I am proud of. 

Side note: a fellow teammate, Clay, actually won his category and became the first national champion from Arizona.