Dry-tooling maestro!

Who'd have thought it, me coming home with a prize for dry tooling and Andy coming home with nothing??!! Ok, ok I admit he wasn't in the same category as me, being male and he didn't compete in the round on saturday because he'd just had his neck and shoulder pummelled by a massage person, and yes he'd have been able to complete all 5 problems with barely breaking into a sweat but the fact remains I won and he didn't!!

Yes, on Saturday we headed over to Rock Over Climbing in Manchester for the final round of their Great Winter Rock Over League, which is a bouldering competition all afternoon followed by a dry tooling competition for those daft enough to have a go and waving the pointy sharp things around. There were 4 rounds but Andy and I only managed to get to 2 of them due to being away and stuff, but we were keen to get along to this last round as the previous one we went to was really good, nice problems, friendly atmosphere, daft climb-off final and lots of prizes - winner!
Unfortunately someone decided to shut a pretty key road on our journey so we spent nearly 2 hours in the car getting to the wall so only had about 1hour 20mins to get out bouldering scores - wasn't the best either of us has ever done, but I still got chucked into the climb-off by default as I think some other women refused!! The climb-off involves 1 problem and being timed. I neither finished the problem or was the fastest - hey ho, good to keep the side up for the older folks - the other girls were teenagers!

Ok, not indoor dry tooling but the only photo I can find of me wielding tools!

Anyway bouldering over, Andy went to have a chat with the free physio folks from Global Therapies about his lumpy neck, they gleefully inserted their thumbs and left Andy feeling a little bit like his arms didn't work anymore and with the advice that he shouldn't do anything for the rest of the day. So this meant that although I hadn't brought any pointy things with me Andy gave me his and pretty much demanded that I get involved. He'd brought along his super shiny and super curved Ergo's so I had a go with them. The format is that there are 3 top-rope short routes and then a couple of long traverses on the bouldering wall. I managed 2 top-ropes first go, and then had a go on the traverses - one of them involved having to climb through a hula-hoop halfway along, which I managed and then fell off getting out of a rest stop a little further along. Not too bad and having then seen most other folk fail to get through the hoop I felt quite chuffed! The next traverse all went pretty well until it came to going across the underside of a roof - holds were a long way apart and I haven't quite got the figure of four thing to try that so off again. The final top-rope was steep and got pretty tricky in the middle as you went up to the top of the panels and then launched out into a chain and a hanging board. I blame the hopeless inability to deal with leashes for not getting up that so well, but I did have a go at the whole thing after a brief sit on the rope.

So, climbing over and with scores in it turned out that I had won the round for the girls class (think I was about 3rd overall including the boys) and the series........ the prize.......... a pair of Boreal shoes when I decide which ones I want and a 12 session pass for Rock Over - awesome!! Oh and a bottle of wine too.
Pretty glad Andy persuaded me to get involved in this round and the earlier one, shame he wasn't fit to climb as I think we might have managed a clean sweep for the round at least!