The Climber's rock sweatfest...

This'll be just a short post, not to keep activity up on this blog, but just to give a shout out fellow Evolv Team members. Last Thursday night, Climber's Rock in Burlington, Ontario held the last of the Sweatfest Series stops before the grand finale being held at the Same location on Sept. 24th and 25th. My buddy Aaron Eden, and also a member of Team Evolv, was Chief Route setter and ran a great comp if I do say so myself. I mean, there are always bumps and bruises in running any kind of comp, even small locals and friendly formats like these. Until you've ran a comp, I don't think you can fully appreciate the amount of effort, stress and struggle it is. Even the little things can become the most annoying and stressful things, like a competitors briefing. They've all done it before right?! No?! Shit! Um ok...Well same rules apply as when you session, start at the start, finish at the finish, make sure you count your attempts instead of just working a bloc. Don't use holds that aren't taped the same colour as you're trying. Really?! I have to mention that?! I have to mention no jump starts as well?! Seriously?! Are you all new to climbing?! This is OPEN category! Ugh....You get my point. The little things pile up and before you know you're sitting in a corner crying while everyone flashes the hardest bloc in the comp, all because you left that giant jug foot on and forgot to switch it back to the original foot after you finished forerunning. NOOOOOOO!!!

Yup, comps are fickle creatures and no amount of planning or presetting can help subside the beast once it's hunger has begun to grow and fester. You just keep battling it out, with sleepless nights, a billion pots of coffee (literally a biullion, or however many Red Bulls it actually does take to give you wings) and whatever kind of motivations you can stir up in that over worked and tired setting brain of yours. Eventually the times comes, and no matter what you do it always seems to come to quickly, the start time for the comp arrives and maybe you're done, maybe you're not, maybe while you do the first competitor briefing, one of the other routesetters or volunteers is slapping numbers on blocs, or is vacuuming the floor. Either way one thing is for certain, on the day of the comp, people will show up and they will rock climb, whether you 60 blocs up or 2 (if you only have 2 I suggest that an hour before the comp starts, you run, really fast and really far.)

So the last of the Summer Sweatfests came and went, Aaron and his team of routesetters (Francis and Tyler) put up 25 blocs, competitors climbed, smiled and enjoyed themselves as they normally do or should and all in all it was a great comp. I hung out, tried some of the problems, took pictures (of which only one turned out, yup I told you guys, still learning, my camera is smarter than me....) and in general just enjoyed the atmosphere. My buddy and Evolv team mate Mark Smith tied for first with Will Johnson and my girl Sasha Vince took first place on the women's side. Well that's it for me, turns out this post was a little bit longer than I intended, oh well. Enjoy guys, stay psyched!

The only good shot...Mark Smith topping out what he thought was the bloc to give him the win, turned out it didn't matter but he did still need it for the tie. Congrats Mark!!! Yea boy!!!