Wow! I still can`t believe it: 10th place at the home worldcup in Meiringen – a perfect start into the new season! Well, almost… An emotinal competition to remember, in a good but also a bad way.
Feeling healthy and strong
The off-season hadn’t been without struggels. In January a was fighting against a persistent virus for over a month. I felt weak the whole time and unable to train seriously. Therefore, I was enormously happy when I finally could train again.
Since that virus I`ve never been ill again. Even at CWIF, where so many athletes got sick, I stayed healthy. CWIF was my first international competition of the year and unsuspecting of the fitness of other athletes I surprised myself with a 10th place. Only one week later at the Studiobloc masters I once again showed a excellent performance, finishing the 6.5 hrs marathon qualification in 5th place and the semifinals in 12th. After these first two successful competitions, I knew everything was possible in Meiringen.
Qualification
The problems in qualification were really well set and so much fun to climb! A lot of coordinative movements, jumps, balancy slabs, toehooks, crimps, pinches, compression moves, slopers – everything was included in the 5 problems. I looked at these problems and was extremely motivated to climb them! Exactly the sort of problems I like most!
2 Tops in 2 and 4 bonus in 4 tries put me into 13th position. I qualified for my first ever bouldering semifinal.
Semifinals and injury
Again, the setting was really cool, but I could hardly enjoy the problems. When falling off the first boulder, I injured my right thumb. I pushed it against my leg while landing on the mat. Even though it hurt a lot and I had no more strength in my right hand, I finished the round. I didn’t want to quit my first semifinal! In my head I was still ready to fight and with the adrenaline and the amazing home-crowd I squeezed everything out of me. I climbed totally focused and forgot about the pain as soon as I was on the wall. In the end I got 10th and I am more than happy about this result.
After the competition I went directly to the hospital for an MRI. Luckily nothing was broken. I had strained some muscles and ligaments, but nothing really bad. In the following week I trained with one arm and I was happy to start climbing again with a splint only about a week after the injury.
