Nationals… Sho My God!

I traveled to Boulder this past week for ABS Nationals. To say the least it was insanity. Injuries, parties, comp formatting, Verve bras, car trouble, pink skintight lycra onesies… The list is endless.


Nathan Nowinowski

I got to Boulder on Thursday and went to Denver to hang with Nate Nowinowski, an old friend from Charlottesville, and went out and scoped the Denver scene. Friday was prelims and Jimmy, Max and I went in with high hopes. We met up with Vasya and Dave and headed to The Spot to make dreams come true and we didn’t do just that…

The ABS Nationals used the World Cup formatting for scoring and I have to say it was absolutely terrible. Maybe it works at some comps but for some reason it was a total failure at this particular event. The way World Cup is formatted is flawed because of the simplicity in the scoring. Points are awarded as follows:

1)Number of Tops
2)Attempts to tops
3)Number of “Zones” reached
4)Attempts to reach “Zones”

A Zone is basically a hold that is a little over halfway up the problem that is boxed off as a bonus hold. If the zone is not reached and even if you do 10,865 moves on a problem and don’t get to a zone hold you get zero points. So there were a lot of ties, roughly 30 or so people topped one problem and zoned in another, while 30 or so more people got either nothing or one zone. Counting falls broke up the ties and that barely separated people well enough to make the event seem interesting.

I fell once on the first men’s problem and then topped, zoned on the second problem, flailed on the third (high feet), and came desperately close to a zone on the fourth. I was in the middle of the tie pack along with a lot of other people. I tied Max but when it came to falls I placed 28th and since Max flashed number 1 he placed 19th. The top 15 places go to finals and there are 5 slots reserved for international competitors so even through Vasya made 17th he was out of finals because he didn’t make top 15. Max was 19th but since there were other international athletes in finals he was the last on the list for finals! Good job mate.




I made finals.... Sho My God.

We went out to Hapa Friday night with a large crew of good friends and then crashed at Jimmy and Kashia’s hotel in Boulder. I “slept” under an open window and froze my ass off and got an hour or so of sleep so that was the beginning of mega sleep deprivation for the next few days…

Jimmy and I woke up early for the $400 cash purse at the Boulder Rock Club Citizens comp Saturday and arrived expecting a good time. We later learned that we were the only competitors in the open category and that there was no cash prize at all. Bummer. So we whooped up on Garret in some foosball and headed to the spot for finals.


So good...

Finals was nuts and the Max started it out right with a hot pink lycra onesie that really showed off his bagel bites… Ethan ruined his shoulder, Carlo got a nice flapper, Laura Griffiths broker her ankle?, and Chauncenia Cox upset the winners circle. Overall it was a really entertaining finals and Daniel murdered it taking home the big bucks as well as Alex Johnson. Nice work! Finals results are here.

After finals we went to Cookies for some after party and then straight from the party to the airport at 4 in the AM and then I got on a flight back to Boone after 30 minutes of airport floor napping. On the way back from the airport I blew a seal in my engine, all of the oil rained out, the engine seized up, and I am currently carless and looking for an engine for a Toyota Camry… Anyone have one? I’ve got $10 and I have only had an hour and a half of sleep in the past 55 or so hours…

The weekend was really fun though disappointing but as always that motivates me to be stronger and try and do better next year. Jimmy and I are taking Nationals 2010 by the way so look out.

On a side note Brion Voges is in town and we went to Lost Cove today and he basically did everything. It was very fun and I got a third ascent on an old Litz problem called Black 45 at Upper Lost Cove. I think this is probably 7C+ even with the heal beta and the way that Litz does it is absolutely insane and much harder. Nate and I also went to Grandmother today so Brion could work Throttle Sit and we tried Car Door sit. With a bit of beta from Pat we were psyched and I figured out a new bit of trickery that got me up the line. I am calling the new boulder Sittin’ Sidewayz keeping with the car theme but making it a bit hood since the problem weighs in around 8A. I guess its fitting.

Here are some pictures from the weekend. Enjoy.


Kashia and Jimmy on Facebook...


The Chicken


Andre and Nic


Daniel on Men's 3


Lisa and Alex


Johnny G!


Johnny on Men's 4


ISO madness




Magnus can hold a mean hand...


Alex on problem 4


Womens winners


Men's Winners