My first climbing competition

So last May, I joined my first climbing competition (with isolation and all).
It was a bouldering and speed comp for the state of Selangor.

I myself is more of a Lead Climber, cos I love lead climbing. But I heard that every state is helding this event and those who win this competition would have a chance to compete in the Nationals by the end of the year. So I registered.
To be completely honest I thought this would be similar to the 2018 competition with Lead, Bouldr and Speed Category. I'm curious as why lead is not included but foreseeing it might have lead category when they do the nationals later on, I just registered anyway even though I'm not used to bouldering and speed climbing.

I don't mind doing bouldering sometime, as it could improve my technique during lead climb.

So what I can conclude from these few weeks of bouldering, I can note some weakness points.

Apart from the apparent strength you need for bouldering, there are few other things need to be considered for bouldering competitions.

1. Route reading.
Sometimes I can read a route sometimes I have no idea even how to start. And sometimes you just got to go and climb to figure it out.
The thing about competition climbing, is you got to finish a particular boulder in 4 minutes. With little attempts as possible. So if you don't know how to read a route, you will waste time and number of attempts.
In a  normal day in a bouldering gym, you can rest as long as you want in between climb. You got one whole day to top a route, if you can't get it that day, you can try again tomorrow.

So its totally different.

2. Mental game
For me in a comp, mental game is crucial. If you're positive, you enjoy the climb, everything will be fine. But if you're overthinking, you will not be able to top  a route you normally can.
And in a comp, there will be pressure. And you will be affected if you can't control your mental game.

So in short, if you want to excel in bouldering, you have to boulder a lot, if you want to excel in competition, you have to join a lot of competition.
Get use to the time constraint and the mental game.

I end up 1st place in the speed category. And 2nd place in boulder category.

I don't know how I won the Speed category cos that is literally the first time I touched the speed wall and do the speed climb. Mostly luck.

But boulder is where I got my mental game tested.
I flashed all 4 qualification routes but in the final, I feel pressured cos I came out last, and I feel like I need to do the best to win. I flashed the first route, could not even get a zone on 2nd route that really made me stuck thinking why I cant do well at the 2nd route and affected my performance on the 3rd route. So I didn't managed to Top it and placed 2nd.

I joined the competition just to try different style of climbing, meet other people and learn their technique so I could apply it to my lead climbing, and able to top my lead project.

At the moment, I will try to focus on my next bouldering competition. Wish me luck.