女儿的留学日志（2） Rock Climbing

学考乐

2020-01-16 22:12:46

Rock climbing has been my favourite sport ever since I joined the Alice Smith School climbing team. I know I have always loved climbing, but my first time to climb on an actual climbing wall was just about a year ago.

When I tried it for the first time, I was really confident. And to be honest, I actually felt that I am quite talented on this. Because I was able to get to the top without any help for the very first time I tried, and a few of my friends couldn’t even climb to the top even though they have been practicing this for a few months. Now, I have been in the climbing team at school for two terms now, and finally, I got a chance to represent our school to go to a climbing competition.

It was a sunny afternoon, the sun was roasting hot as I left my music class early to change into our climbing kit, and we got onto the bus to Camp 5 gym. On the bus, the teacher promised us to get bubble tea after we have finished the competition. I found it very perplexing, “why bubble tea?”because most people have been participated in many competitions already, so they have known that is to get bubble tea after the competition was finished. As we approached to Camp 5, everyone else’s minds were on bubble tea, whilst my stomach started churning and I even started biting my fingers involuntarily, and all of that was because of how nervous I was. There was literally nothing else in my mind other than: what will be waiting for me? Would the climbing wall be really hard to get to the top? How would my climbing skills be comparing to others?” After we arrived at Camp 5, and my chin near dropped when I realized that the teacher wants us to take the stairs rather than taking the elevator as a warm up, but there were 7 floors in total! I was panting so hard and nearly out of breath when I finally made to the top. I pulled a face towards my teacher to show disappointment: “ How I am going to climb whilst gasping for breath?”

Since that was my first time taking part in a climbing competition, my goal wasn’t to win a medal (because I know it would be really hard and I just need to try my best), but I think enjoying this experience is more important. However, by that time I still didn’t really know how the competition would work: whether it is one person climbing and the others watching aside? Or we just choose which one we want to climb depending on our own abilities? Therefore I was really frightened by how many people there were, I counted that there were about 100 people from 10 different international schools in Kuala Lumpur taking part in this competition, the stress in me grew even stronger.

“Wow!” I was amazed by how massive the climbing gym was and compared to our school’s climbing wall, that one was at least 20 times bigger. I was busy wandering around to see the whole climbing gym, and there were two floors crowded with people chattering.

The competition started accurately at 4 p.m, and we each got a scoreboard, which included 20 different climbing walls in total, and we got to choose which one I would like to do. The bigger the number, the harder it is, and of course you get more points for those; If you only get to the zone, which is about halfway to the top, you can only get half of the points; If you get to somewhere below the zone, you don’t get any points. Because we only had two and a half hours to do as many as we can, on that account, as soon as the timer started, I darted towards a climbing wall nearby, which was number 3. It looked quite daunting to me at first, because compared to the climbing wall at school , that one was a lot taller. But instead, I found it fairly easy after I tried it, so I was aiming for some more challenging ones: “If I can do the number 8s or 9sthen I would be able to get over a thousand points at one time!” Maybe it was because the scores attracted me too much, which made me to go straight for number 11. Despite my confidence, I still ended up feeling really disappointed and also wasted 30 mins of my time. Because the whole wall was tilted towards the front and the rocks were extremely small, that’s why it was so hard for me to climb, whenever I tried to move, I didn’t have enough force to pull my body up and keep balance at the same time. What was even more surprising was that I didn’t even manage to take the second move before I just fall back off, three tries but no difference. That really overwhelmed me, because before that, I never realized that there is a climbing wall that I couldn’t reach the top! Much of my strength have been taken away after that try, and sweat was rolling down my neck, while I watched people cheering for their friends as they gradually make to the top. And as I was watching, a sense of jealousy rose in my heart, but there was nothing I could do about it. After I regained my strength, I sprinted towards number 1, because I think for me, it would be better to start from the easy ones. I got through the first part very smoothly, but just pass the zone, I was in a cleft stick for 2 mins, sweat was constantly rolling down my face whenever I tried to move my feet a bit. I could feel that my hands were shaking violently, as if they were going to lose the grip at any second. I couldn’t move on, because I didn’t find the right move; I couldn’t give up, because otherwise I would just have wasted another 10 mins, and even if I wanted to, I was not brave enough to let the rope go and drop myself back to the ground. At that moment, I heard my friend Zaylee shouting at me : “Come on Jessie! You can do this!” Even though I was already exhausted, those words were still very motivating for me and I was determined to move on. Unexpectedly, I found the right move and smoothly got to the top! My face was brimming with a big smile when the coach circled around the score, “That was close, I almost didn’t get that!” I was screaming and waving my scoresheet at my friends. About 20 minutes later, the competition finished, and I got just over 400 points in total. I know the points I got wasn’t that admirable, but I was still satisfactory myself, probably because I wasn’t anticipating to get a medal among over 100 people.

After the competition, I was so excited to tell my mum about the competition, because although my scores weren’t exceptional compared to my friends, but I think enjoying the whole experience is more important. My coach told me that there will be another competition like this a few months later, and he recommended me to definitely take part in that as well. And I believe if I practice more skills and routes during this few months.