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Kevin high on the men’s final route
It’s not often I say this, but today I went to a climbing competition. It was the final of the Scottish Dry Tooling Masters at the Ice Factor in Glen Coe. This morning I was not psyched. I had a strange dizzy spell after getting out of bed (no It wasn’t anything to do with alcohol, or an early start). Weird dizziness persisted and I wasn’t even sure if I’d be ok to drive to the Coe, but I got back my level head (sic) after several cups of tea and three breakfasts (two healthy, one not).
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Go on... Go on... Go on....!
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The leap, on the ‘leap of faith’ route in the ice room.
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After feeling ok on the axes in the relaxed qualifiers, things got horribly formal with isolations, finals, and then a superfinal. I puffed my way to the belay of the final route, but the superfinal was a tad different. I lunged for a well sketchy hook and didn’t get it right. I reached for the rope to pull up slack and clip, and got as far as whispering the ‘watch…’ of ‘watch me incase I ping off making this clip’ and next thing I knew I was flying. A good place to end the night and head up the windy Loch Leven road with Nevis Radio’s ‘Take the Floor’ as the tunes of psyche.
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Wobbling to a shaky win in the finals.
Aye, It was a good day Dave, apologies for being one of the loudest wanting the wall dropped to the low position! But it did make for a good superfinal!
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