Incredibly late climbing update

I'm sure nobody cares any more, but I wanted to write about the climbing competition properly, 'cos it was ace.

I speed-climbed a route that was at least a mile high (this may not be an entirely accurate measurement but it helps add a bit of bloggy drama and excitement, lord know we need some more of that.) in about 13.5 seconds, beating the nearest time by 3 seconds.
For this, I won a women's t-shirt, which was obviously not a huge amount of use to me (although I did try it on just in case) but should come in handy in about 46 days time.

I jumped 2.3 metres from handhold to handhold in order to get a third place in the, er, 'jumping from handhold to handhold' competition. It's called a Dyno competition but I didn't want to blind people with jargon.

I also climbed a load of short routes and one big long route without falling off hardly at all, (jargon removed for ease of reading) which helped to give me enough points to come second overall.
It could have been first but I was playing the thinking man's game and trying to work the percentages in order to get the best chance of winning. This was a stupid idea of course, I should have been playing the climbing man's game, seeing as how I was in a climbing competition. It all seems so simple looking back on it.

I got chatting to a guy who was writing an article about the competition for his Journalism course, he was a nice chap and ego boost aside, even though his work would probably never be published any more widely than on his University Intranet, being interviewed after my frankly incredible performance in the speed climb made me feel like a proper athlete and everything.

Second place netted me a huge climbing-hold thing as a prize, you are supposed to bolt it to a convenient wall and then regularly hang on it to practice your different holds and improve your grip. This would be great if I had a convenient wall to bolt it to. I tried to put it up at work, but I swear that I was told I couldn't put it up on work premises because of the health and safety implications. I will not go on about this, but it can be officially noted that 'health and safety' is very, very high on my list of things I want to be able to send deep into space on a very powerful rocket with no steering controls. (Just in case you were wondering, I would put Bono in the cockpit.)

Anyway, health and safety aside, I had a great time, the competition aspect of the event made it really exciting, I won something of actual monetary value, and I did much better than I thought I possibly could so my ego is suitably sated too.

I might have to enter a few more of these things.