Wednesday 22 April 2009

BWC Japan

On Tuesday the 07th of April the Austrian, Dutch and Italian team, Stew and I went to Japan. The competition took place in Kazo a small town an hour away from Tokyo. The qualification went pretty well for me and I managed to climb 3 of the 5 very hard problems. In the semi-final it did not turn out that good anymore, the problems were unusual hard and I had a hard time to get 3 bonuses. I finished in place 17.
Our extended team stayed a week longer in Japan to experience a bit more of the culture and to climb. We all dumped our bags in a climbing wall in Tokyo called pump2 which was our base for the week. Then we went for two days climbing, which was amazing. On the first day we went to a really tufary crack called Togiama and on the second day we went to a secret climbing area from Yugi. I got a lot of climbing done and was surprised of my decent stamina. Then it went back to our base and we spent another day sight seeing in Tokyo. The next two days we went bouldering in Shopera. Unfortunately it rain all day as soon as we arrived and I did not climb very much. However, the second day was beautiful and I enjoyed to climb with the girls. On the same night we went back to Tokyo and after waking up the next morning some of us had a training session in pump2. Sadly the next day it was time to fly back home. I was really amazed by the way the Japanese climbers took care of us. They organized everything for us, beginning from where to stay and climb, drove us around in their cars and helped us ordering our food.