The comp season

The season comp has been pretty weird this year, It started with the first Boulder Italian Cup in Rome this past April. I trained hard all the winter for this date and I was quite syked to compete, but every competitors know that the psyche in not enough to do a great performance. Train for competition it’s every time a rebus because it’s really hard to listen to our body and to understand ,for example, when it’s time to stop training; but this is the hardest  thing that a climber have to complain, even after many year of climbing experiences some climbers are not fully able to understand them-self.                    

Be in shape in that place, in that precise moment, when you are in the “ARENA”,  is definitely so hard, much harder than try an hard proj on the rock. I kept competing over these years despite my poor results because only with a comp victory you can say “I’m the strongest today” and none can’t say anything about this, just keep quiet and train for the next comp.

Coming back to the Italian Cup, it was a total disaster. Probably I arrived too over-trained or just too tired to deal with a comp that was played in a single day (qualification, semis and final). The qualification was okay and I got into the semis quite easily, but then when the real comp started I felt just to tired and after two boulders I lost my head and I finished at the bottom of the ranking, around 20th position with one top in countless attempts.

Qualification round in Rome. Pic Pierre Zanone

The Italian competition calendar is unmanageable because the comps are played with several months away so It’s definitely impossible to be in shape a whole year. The next comp ,after the one in Rome, would have been in Gressoney in the middle of August,  but my shoulder injury didn’t allowed to take part. At that time could climb yet but when you are in the middle of a comp you think just to stick the holds and to make the best you can without caring about any injuries; so I decided to wait till the next one that would have been one month later.

I started to train again, mainly on my own moonboard because the climbing gym were closed and because moonboard  and fingerboard are the best things to strengthen the big back muscles and the fingers strength in very less time. After the injury my right back side was basically without any muscles, there was a huge disproportion form the left side and the right one so just a miracle could get me back in shape in such a short time. The training was worth quite a bit  because the comp went quite well even if my semis round seemed more like a lead comp because I climbed the problem with my forearm fuckin’ pump. I was 10th topping 3 problems in 7 attempts.

Few days after this comp I went to Frankenjura for a couple of weeks with my homies Andrea and Gabri with a little stop of 5 days in Stuttgart for the Adidas Rockstar. It was absolutely really worth the stop because and location (Porsche Arena) and the competition are amazing. The time in Frankenjura was awesome but I decided to take this time to try to send as many historical routes I could. Here a short list on my favorites:

-         Bastard 8a+ Jerry Moffat  ‘89

-         Centre Court 8a+ W. Gullich ‘87

-         Slimline 8a W. Gullich ‘91

-         Ira Technokratie 8a W. Gullich ‘84

-         Chasin' The Trane 7C  J. Bachar ’81 (OS) 

Slimline 8a/+ Frankenjura Pic. Andrea Zanone

After this long trip, probably my longest trip so far, I had like 3 weeks for training again for the last Italian Cup in Milan.

Saturday, October 18 I had the qualification round; I felt like a big dragon, I was able to stick everything, all the problems seemed like sooo easy. Unfortunately I didn’t have this power the next day on the semifinal round and I flashed just one problem of four, finishing this circuit not in best way for sure.

My motivation for training increased again because I really hate when I’m not able to do what I know I can do. One comp still left in the calendar, the most important of the season, the Boulder Italian Championship in Modena. The last year I had and amazing comp, getting the best position so far, the 4th place, but this year would have been very hard to accomplish the feat again because all the Italian strong boulderers were there. I started to be in shape one week before the event and I arrived at the comp in a really good shape. The semis round was definitely the best so far, the boulder were awesome and well settled for sure. 

I was able to top 3 tops in 6 attempts finishing the season in the 10th position.

I’m definitely very proud and happy of my performance even if I could do slightly better making fewer mistakes on the first boulder. It was so easy but I failed 2 times for the wrong interpretation of the problem, but even if I had flashed the first one, it would have been not enough to get into the final because the second boulder was hard for me to do in 4 minutes so I would have placed 7th, the first one out of the final or we usually call it “ the first of the fuckers”.

2nd semifinal boulder in Modena Pic Edo Limonta

Making a summary, now that the comps are over I can say it was pretty poor of results but the winter is coming, the bouldering season is at the gates, the training period as well and I’m psyched as never to start it in the best way.

  

Let’s go training and take down your own projs! :)