Recently Jurassic Team member and GB Team member, Tommy Matthews entered the British Lead and Speed Climbing Championships in Sheffield. Tommy is naturally a boulderer and has not majored on lead or speed climbing. Now that these two forms and bouldering make up the new Olympic competition for 2020 he has started training and competing. Here in his own words is what happened!
British Lead and Speed Climbing Championships
Hi, I’m Tommy Matthews. Two years ago when I was in the youth B category I competed in my first official British lead competition at Awesome walls climbing centre, Sheffield. I wasn’t very prepared for the comp as I wasn’t a big fan of leading so the extent of my training was to take practice falls so I could get my head around that aspect of the discipline. Somehow I managed to pull off two great climbs placing me just outside of the finals and within the top 10.
Two years later I am back and last weekend I competed in my second British Lead Climbing Championships and for the first time I also competed in the British Speed Climbing Championships.
Fortunately, I was a little bit more prepared for this competition, emphasis on a “little bit”. I had two practice lead session and three fitness bouldering sessions in advance of the competition. My bouldering sessions consisted of my favourite fitness training exercises, doing 15 climbs in 15 minutes or 30 climbs in 30 minutes. I find these make you work really hard and get your heart racing as well as getting you rather pumped. When I do these exercises I focus on climbing hard problems well and working different movements. My lead sessions were more focused at on-sighting and taking falls, my best on-sight of the training day was a hard 7b+ and doing well on an 8a.
At the competition I was feeling rather nervous, well to be honest a little terrified. I had the misfortune of being the second person to try the first climb. Having watched the beta video and my previous competitor climb well, I tied myself in and pulled onto the climb. As you can imagine with me being a boulderer I climbed my way through the route as if it was a boulder problem instead of a lead climb and got myself into an awkward position for one of the hard moves causing my hand to slip out of the bad pocket and taking an early fall. Instead of being frustrated or disappointed with my performance, I just started laughing at how silly a mistake I made. This mistake left me ranked 13th after the first climb so all I could hope for was a good performance on the second climb, which thankfully I produced! I felt like I climbed a lot better on the second climb and this was obvious by the height I achieved, but got to a point where the fear of falling overpowered my confidence and I jumped off. I am now a little disappointed in my decision as If I had attempted to make the next move then I would have made finals, but I was pleased at the time. This decision left me ranked in 5th for the second climb, giving me an overall ranking of 10th. This was unfortunate because, if I had made the move it would have improved my rankings to 2nd for the second climb and 6th in the overall.
On the Sunday I aimed to improve my progress and compete in the British Speed Climbing Championships. Although I had never been on the speed wall and had no idea what I was about to face, I was really excited to give it a go. Having watched great runs by Emily Phillips and Hannah Slaney, it was finally my turn. I finished a rather sketchy and slow practice attempt with a time of 22.25 seconds, but over the next two timed races improved to 19.12 seconds and then 17.03 seconds.
These times meant that I could advance to the round of 16, where it was head to head eliminate races. Every time I pulled onto the climb my technique improved. My first head to head climb finished with me getting a time of 14.43 seconds, and on my second climb I achieved a time of 14.34 seconds. Sadly, this wasn’t enough to make the finals as I was beaten by 0.3 seconds, but I was able to proceed to the 3rd place fight off. The pressure was on as this was my last opportunity to make a podium over the weekend and I spent a few minutes planning my way up the climb. Finally, Sammy Oakes and I got clipped into the ropes and waited for the horn. When the horn blew we both had a good start with me leading until half way, sadly a little slip put me behind but I managed to catch up. My timing had improved to 13.67 seconds, but not by enough as I was again beaten by 0.3 seconds. I was really impressed with my performance as it was my first experience on the speed wall, hopefully with a lot more training and practice I can get this to a time of under 10 seconds before the next speed competition.
I have just started on my journey towards the 2020 Olympics and together with my coach Paul Jackson of Jurassic Climbing Academy I now begin my 4 years of training!
