SCOTTISH YOUTH CLIMBING FINALS

Today was the day of the competition between the finalists of the YCS Scottish South team and the Scottish North team, to find out the competitors ranking position in Scotland.

RB wasn't sure if she was going to make it or not as she'd had a school trip down to Alton Towers that had been arranged previous to the date of the comp being known.   She decided that even though she knew she'd be knackered, that she'd like to head down to Ratho wall anyway to take part.
On the Thursday evening, RB's bus set off from Brechin High School at midnight, to travel down to Alton Towers, where RB and her classmates spent the day before journeying back up to Brechin on Friday evening.  The bus was supposed to arrive at the school at 12.30am but due to an episode of sickness on the 2nd bus, they didn't arrive home until 2am.  By the time RB got home and off to bed, it was 2.30am, giving us 4.5 hours of sleep before we had to get up for the comp at 7am.

Bleary eyed we drove down to Edinburgh, where we made it just in time for registering and RB to have a brief warm up.  Unfortunately, RB didn't get a chance to warm up properly.  They get the kids running about and doing star jumps etc etc for around 5minutes, but it's not really enough to warm up sufficiently to try anything hard.  The 14-16 girls did all their boulder problems first.  RB doesn't like that order, much prefering to do an easy boulder problem, followed by an easy route to warm up.
When it came to them doing their 2nd boulder problem, she was just too tired and stiff and barely just caught the first crux hold before struggling to find the ooomph to push up for the next move.  She fell off on that move on all of her 3 goes, disheartened I think after falling the first time and realising just how tired she was.  4 of the girls managed to complete the problem, so that put RB 11 points behind and in 5th place.  She was gutted!  Especially after coming joint 2nd on the hardest boulder problem, finally warmed and more awake, going back to try the 2nd boulder problem and totally cruising it without any hesitation.
They were supposed to start their 1st route 10mins later, but had a wait of nearly an hour, cooling down again.  No problem, RB was awake now and the 1st route was easy and cruised by most of the girls.  RB still in 5th place.

The 2nd route was a good bit harder and only the one girl from the British Team, RB and another girl who climbed amazingly well managed to complete the route, most of RB's other competition falling off on the final hold.  RB was now 2 points to making 4th place but a large 9 points to making 3rd place.  Could she do it?
The final route was held on the new competition wall which is a hinged wall, allowing it to lean back to ridiculously overhanging!  The final route looked nails!  Only the girl from the British Team managed to complete it.  RB beat the girl who was in 2nd place but only by 2points, and she drew with the girl in 3rd place.  She managed to overtake her friend in 4th place, and gain 4th for herself, but didn't make up the points to get any further.
She was so disappointed.  She climbed those routes so well and if she hadn't been so tired first thing, she would have got 2nd place and into the super final.  The top 3 are put into isolation and have to climb an even harder route up the steep wall.  It wasn't to be though, but I think she did amazingly well under the circumstances!  Only 4.5 hrs sleep, still climbing hard on her routes and beating girls older than her.   She shouldn't have that problem during the British Finals though and has learnt what she needs to do to warm up effectively though.