Tuesday, February 22, 2011

ABS Youth Nationals 2011

Well I spent the last four days in Boulder, Colorado for youth nationals and man was it sick!!!  We went because the girl I coach Zowe Gardener got a first round invite.  We left around noon on Thursday and arrived round 730 that night in Boulder.  We got her all checked in and headed back to the hotel.  Zowe didn't have to climb until 912 the following night so needless to say we had a little time to kill.  Bobby, who is Zowe's dad, and I decided that the next morning we would run a Flat Iron while Zowe relaxed at the hotel.  We decided to do Fandango which is the classic 5.5 because we thought we could run up there do it real fast and get back faster that way we didn't leave Zowe for too long.  But needless to say things hardly ever go as planned.  We found the trailhead easy enough and started hiking completely stoked about the climb.  When we arrived at the first Flat Iron and thought we were on route but we ended up on the wrong one.  Anyways everything turned out fine and we had a blast!  I have to mention that I wore my Climb X Zions and they were awesome!  Even though they are a soft shoe it was nice to be able to feel everything that my toes were on.  Anyways a little while later we were back at the car and on our way to pick Zowe up and get some food!

That night was qualifiers and they would take the top 18 out of the 34 competitors to the next round.  Zowe was in the middle of the group and as we watched our nerves started to quicken.  She came out flashed the first problem, that gave me a big sigh of relief not because I didn't believe in her but because you never know what's going to happen.  She make good work of problem 2 and 3.  Problem 4 which was a delicate slab problem with a vital hold on the opposite wall that was easy to miss gave her a bit of a problem, but when the results came out we were in 15th place and going to semifinals!  Zowe had to be into iso at 645 and was scheduled to climb around 720 the following night.  We all slept in that morning and just relaxed together.  That night we watched Zowe on her problems and she climbed really well.  Now she didn't end up making it to finals, but we ended up in 13th and we'll take that :) now it's time to start training for SCS!!!  I should have pictures up from this adventure soon!!!

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