The Space Between Competitions

The bouldering World Cup season ended in June, and I'm still tired.

Normally, I'd take some time off following the last event of the regular season to rest and reset, but this is a World Championships year, so I didn't have long before I had to get back to it. And so, since the end of the long World Cup season, I've been training hard.

This year, I competed in five countries between May and June - Brazil, the USA, the Czech Republic, Switzerland, and Austria. It was an excellent season despite a minor hamstring injury in March that forced me to decline the China World Cup in April. I ended up making three semi-final rounds out of the five (and came one spot shy in a fourth!), secured my spot on the Canadian Team for 2026, was the only Canadian woman to advance to a semi-final round, and finished with a top-25 World Ranking.

I'd never travelled to Brazil before, and it was such a great event - my favourite of the season. It was the most energetic and passionate crowd I've ever had the pleasure of competing in front of. The European leg was long and difficult, but I really felt like I went into athlete-mode and prioritized performance and training in a distracting continent of bakeries and beautiful architecture.

By the time the final World Cup in Austria wrapped up, I was feeling both travelled-out and World Cup’ed-out. But with the World Champs ahead, it wasn't time to relax just yet.

When we got home from Europe, I took a week off, then went back to the grind, and back to Ontario for some other kind of work.

In July, we travelled to Toronto for something new and exciting - working with MacLachlan College, an Independent School based out of Oakville. MacLachlan recently partnered with Richardsons Climbing to consult on and coach their new High Performance Climbing program, which launches this fall. Zach and I are thrilled to be working on a project like this, and it's great that a school like MacLachlan is so passionate about growing the Canadian climbing community.

This program will be the first of its kind in Canada, combining elite-level coaching with academic flexibility, allowing elementary and high-school-aged competitive climbers to pursue their goals without sacrificing their education. You can read more about it here.

As part of that partnership, we hosted a youth competitive climbing workshop at The Boardroom by Climber’s Rock in Burlington. It was our first stab at running a full-fledged workshop under Richardsons Climbing, and we were blown away by the turnout. Over 30 athletes from all across southern Ontario came to train with us in Burlington.

Zach and I learned a lot working with the next generation of youth climbers in Canada, sharing training ideas, competition tips, and a bit of our own experience from the circuit. Hopefully, this will be the first of many workshops to come!

As training ramps up in the final stretch to Worlds, things have slowed down with YouTube for the time being. I’ve learned I can’t give my best to both intense training and constant filming without one of them suffering, and right now, competition prep has to take the lead. Zach is also taking some time off climbing, which makes this a quieter stretch for both of us compared to our usual pace on YouTube.

As the space between now and Seoul grows smaller, my attitude towards training has been shifting. It's getting harder to drag myself to the gym when I've been on for so long. Doing back-to-back World Cups for months on end was mentally draining more than anything, and the only thing keeping me going now is the promise of a month off after the World Championships.

Don't get me wrong - I'm looking forward to competing in Seoul. I love travelling to Asia, I love Korea, and I love World Cups. I love all of these things, but I wish there wasn't so much time between events, and the season could be a little shorter.

To get to the finish line, I've been making adjustments. I've pushed my workouts to the rest day, so there's less to do on a single training day. I've taken the odd double rest day to catch up on recovery. Even today, I called for my rest week a couple of days earlier.

In the past, I've been rigid about my training program. Very rarely would I stray from the plan or skip a workout. Now, I'm giving myself permission to slow down, focus on quality, and give my mind and body space to perform. Those changes have made a huge difference and will be crucial in the lead-up to Seoul.

So while the season has already been so long, I'm still determined to give everything I have left in the tank to the World Championships.

The World Championships take place from September 23-27, and you can watch semi-finals and finals on the IFSC Climbing YouTube channel, and of course our YouTube channel, Richardsons Climbing. You can also watch me compete in all of my semi-final rounds this season in Brazil, Salt Lake City, and Bern.

If you’d like to support our journey to Seoul and beyond, you can become a paid member of our blog, donate, or join our Patreon. Every dollar goes directly toward helping us train, travel, and compete to represent Canada internationally.