Forty Days to China

Last weekend I competed in the Dark Room Open at Bloc Shop and won.

Just coming off my injury, this kind of competition was perfect. The Dark Room Open is an old-school themed competition hosted by the iconic Bloc Shop bouldering gym. With the old-school style - which I did get a taste of between 2011 and 2014 when I first started competing - there's an emphasis on small holds, bad holds, and powerful moves. With my particular injury, small holds never caused pain for me, so I was pretty much good to throw down hard at this competition even though I'm probably 5% away from being fully healed.

For those of you following my YouTube channel or this blog, you'll know I injured my left wrist just before Christmas last year. It was minor enough that I didn't need to completely stop climbing, but major enough that it dragged on for months and forced me to completely uproot my training program and improvise.

Now just on the other side of it, I'm starting to look back at the injury and the alternative training I was forced to do, and I think I might be glad it happened...

Of course, I wasn't very happy in the thick of it. I lost quite a few training days resting and responding to setbacks. There was even a day somewhere in January where I went to the gym, did my ground warmup, hopped on my first warm-up boulder of the day, and had to stop my session immediately and go home because the pain was showing up in places it never used to, and I thought I was back to square one. On that particular day, I was over a month into my rehab and I thought things were taking a turn. That day set me back mentally more than anything.

After that, we had to do a lot of improvisation based on what I could and couldn’t do, and we had to become experts at identifying what holds triggered the pain, which seemed to change from one day to another.

It was also around this time that I had to make a decision about whether I could compete at Nationals. With the registration deadline weeks prior to the event, it was too early to tell if I could compete or not, so we decided against it. Zach and I still made the trip to Calgary and hung out with some friends and family while we were there, which was really fun. I even had an opportunity to commentate a few of the rounds at Nationals, which was a really rewarding experience.

Around this time, two months into the injury, Zach and I really hit a stride with my training and I was starting to make gains in departments I'd never touched before, simply because I was forced to. I was training one arm pull-ups for multiple reps, and I didn't even think I could do one! I was climbing on the Kilter Board for the first time, which got me to train a major weakness of mine - body tension.

I got exposed to some really interesting training that pushed me out of my comfort zone and made my body do things it didn't think it could do and until now - didn't like to do

It’s been so long since I've been a complete beginner at something and got to go through those newbie gains to build new neurological pathways, and I started really enjoying my alternative training.

At the end of the day, everyone - my S&C coach Libor, Zach, my step-dad - all agree: the injury was a good thing.

However... I’m happy it’s over. Glad it happened, happy it’s over.

It’s nice to get crazy strong on crimps and pull-ups for two months, but I also needed to start climbing actual boulders again.

Just after the trip to Nationals, we decided I was ready to get back into real training, and start translating the strength gains into on-the-wall performance. I got just about a of month of "normal" training in before the Dark Room Open came around, which was perfect timing.

This year the Dark Room Open fell on the same day as Ontario Youth Boulder Provincials, where we had one athlete from our MacLachlan College team competing. Zach decided to travel down to Oakville to coach on his own so that I could compete in Montreal.

Luckily, my mom and step-dad decided to come visit over the weekend, so it didn’t end up being the loneliest competition ever. My mom even played cameraman, so I was able to make my competition debrief video of the event.

The first comp of the season is always an interesting one, because things aren’t always the same as usual. I haven’t competed since the World Championships back in September and a lot of new things happened this season with my training. I knew I was feeling good, but the Dark Room Open was the first test.

And boy - after this comp, I’m feeling really good.

The qualifier was potentially one of the best qualifiers of my career. An informal goal I set for myself was to qualify for the men’s final. Of course, I wouldn’t actually be able to compete in it, but I wanted to see if my score could come close to being able to qualify for their final, since we all climb on the same scramble boulders.

I figured that this old-school style was perfectly suited to my strengths right now coming out of the injury, and I wanted to see just how strong I was.

The qualifier consisted of boulders graded from 1-50, with 50 being the hardest. Usually to make a men’s final, most of your climbs have to be in the top ten. For this comp, your eight hardest boulders went towards your score.

In the round I started off with a couple hard ones: 41, 43, 38. Then, I decided to hop on 49. It was a steep cave boulder with just pure crimps. I took one look at it and thought, I think I can do that one. I don't usually try the hardest boulders in a mixed-gender scramble comp, but today I was feeling lucky.

Four tries later, I was at the top of boulder 49 and really excited to put the second-hardest climb on my scorecard.

I was in the first of three heats, so there were hardly any other people competing on the same boulders as me and I really didn’t know what that top would mean for my score. Would other guys do this one? Would it come down to attempts? How many more boulders would I need if I wanted to qualify?

Regardless of the “men’s final” goal, I was really happy with the boulder.

I went on to do 47, 44, and some other boulders to fill in my scorecard. At the end of the round I was convinced it wouldn’t quite be enough for my goal, though I was confident I would be in the women’s final.

After I went home to rest up for the evening’s round, I was watching the scores for the other heats come in. One by one, I saw men attempting and not sending number 49, and I was really surprised, confused, and excited all at once.

After the rounds ended, it turned out only Seb - a super strong comp veteran on the men's side - sent the boulder, and no one did number 50. So my top on 49 was actually really good compared to the field, and was enough to put my score in fifth place for the men’s round (eight to finals).

So, all in all it was an excellent start to the competition and my season.

The final, while far louder and more exciting, was a little less eventful. I was able to top every boulder in the final to secure my second consecutive win at the Dark Room Open.

A huge shoutout goes to BetaBreakerz for live streaming the event and providing me with their footage from finals so I could use it for my video. You can watch my video on Richardsons Climbing this Thursday, or the livestream on BetaBreakerz below!

So with that win under my belt, the next event to look towards is the first World Cup of the season - China.

China is my favourite location for a World Cup. It's the farthest, the biggest time change, the biggest culture shock, the most difficult to navigate, and yet it's the one I look forward to the most.

To psychoanalyze myself for a second, I think it’s because China is where my first international competition was. Youth World Championships, Guangzhou, 2016.

My whole family went with me for two weeks in November of that year. It was the first time I saw athletes from other countries, saw their routines, their jerseys, and competed against them. It was an eye-opening experience to say the least. It reminds me of a time when I competed in a world of possibilities, with zero expectations or pressure to perform.

Last year, a hamstring tear cost me the 2025 edition of the Chinese World Cup and I was distraught to miss it. This year, I got the annual injury over with well in advance and (fingers crossed) I’m feeling very optimistic about this season.

So from here, the countdown is officially on to the 2026 World Climbing Season.

The China World Cup begins on May 1st, and I leave just about 40 days from now. My mind is completely focused on not getting injured, refining my competition tactics, and keeping a level head as I go into what I think will be my most exciting season yet.

Here is the full season schedule:

📍MAY 1–3: Keqiao (CHN)
📍 MAY 22–24: Bern (SUI)
📍 MAY 28–31: Madrid (ESP)
📍 JUNE 3–6: Prague (CZE)
📍 JUNE 17-19: Innsbruck (AUT)
📍 OCTOBER 16-18: Salt Lake City (USA) *TBD