Climbing competition!

Yes, on Saturday, Sarah and I did our first-ever bouldering competition at the Spot, our favorite wintertime hangout. It was a blast!

I entered the men's "advanced" division, which is roughly equivalent to expert in mountain bike racing (ie, the highest non-pro category) and Sarah did the women's intermediate (think sport). We were both pretty worried that we'd get shellacked, but that turned out not entirely to be the case.

I was *unbelieveably* nervous, despite the lack of any stakes (even if I'd won, I wouldn't have won any prizes) and despite the fact that I always claim not to take climbing seriously. So I didn't bother to eat lunch (which would cause some problems later when I started drinking the free beer - but I won't go into that) and was sweating like crazy before the competition actually started.

Once we got going, I settled down a little. I thought I was climbing like absolute crap, but I managed to do 6 of the 10 advanced problems and come pretty close on 2 of the open/elite ones. That was good enough for 12th place of 29 entrants. Sarah was 2nd of 9 intermediate women. Nice work!

Sorry about the picture quality. The air was so thick with chalk dust that it was actually causing problems with the camera!