Ben Abel’s Climbing Adventures #69

Ben writes:

Greeting from Tokyo,

This blog will be short, just keeping everyone up to date on where I am.

At the start of April I flew to Berlin for 2 weeks of training on competition style boulders before making my way to Meiringen, Switzerland for the first Boulder World Cup round of the season. Then it was off to Moscow, Russia for the following World cup. After this it was back to Berlin for 2 weeks, training in different gyms to experience as much variety in setting styles as possible before jetting off to the next 2 rounds in Chongqing and Tai’an, China. After China I flew straight to Tokyo for three weeks before the World cup to spend time on Japanese style boulders.

It’s about the half way mark until I compete in Tokyo for the 5 th round of this season. My favourite parts so far were definitely Switzerland and Moscow, for these World Cups I was travelling alone, so it forced me to make friends and spend time with people from other countries. I am loving the whole experience of travelling and competing alongside the world’s best, constantly learning new skills and developing myself as a climber and as a person.

Unfortunately, before this trip even started I overtrained and injured the A2 pulley on each of my middle fingers. At first it was bearable but as this trip goes on it is slowly getting worse, which has thrown a spanner in the works of my mental preparation. There is no question about me missing the Tokyo round, but I am still deciding what to do after that, so for now I am focusing on having fun and enjoying being in a really cool Moscow red square country with lots of friends and lots of psyched climbers.