I arrived at Reading for around 8.30 and signed in and grabbed my competition t-shirt, looked at the routes and did some bouldering to warm up and jumped on route at around 10ish.
I started on a technical and rather reachy Fr6C, then to the 6B+ then 7A and got each of them onsight/flash. I was eyeing up the moves on the 7B and thought that it looked very technical and pretty fingery for a 7B, I had half an hours rest and jumped on it and pulled through the moves and kept pulling and kept going and I wasn't coming if, soon after I clipped the lower-off and I was on for everything on-sight... All I had to do now was onsight the 7C for the win.
After about an hours rest with 30 minutes until the end I decided to go for the 7C, at this point the route was starting to get busy. With 15 minutes to go, I finally got an oppurtunity to get on route, I climbed most of the route effortlessly until about 3 moves from the top when I fell pulling up slack to make the final clip before the finish. With 5 minutes to go, I got another chance and blew it with two moves to go, I was pretty sure that I would have finished it on my third attempt. Time was up. I finished in third. I later found out that the winner got the 7C on the fifth attempt and second place got the same score as me but beat me on round points.
Overall I had a really enjoyable day and was happy to make the podium in my first national competition(CWIF is international). Well done to everybody who made the final.
On the 7C
Photo Credit: Gary Willis
