Notes
My first climbing competition. The rules were: as many climbs as you could do in 6 hours; can only do the same route twice, higher difficulties result in higher scores; all in the dark with headlamps (what a twist!).
First off, if this were a running race, I would say I did a terrible job pre-race as I had a hard run this morning and played tennis. But this was a climbing comp and it was too nice of a day to waste it. Still, I don't doubt I could have been better rested.
My strategy was basically to treat this as a normal day of climbing where I would warm-up on easier routes then do some 5.10's for a while. This worked for a bit other than not often having the route that I wanted available. In retrospect, I think I either should have focused on getting a few more difficult climbs and taken longer rests, or done as many easier routes as possible.
By the 3rd hour, I was starting to fall on routes I can normally do and getting frustrated I hadn't done as much as I'd hoped. My partner Adam was having a worse day of climbing, but he was at least excited to continue. We'd taken several longer breaks already but I just wasn't going to recover to do any difficult climbs.
3 hours was already longer than I had ever been at the gym, and we were only halfway. Around 4 hours I started feeling pains as opposed to just struggling through being tired and pumped (the main pain was my right shoulder, which was probably tennis-related, but my wrists and fingers were feeling stressed as well).
Right about then, Adam took a break patching up a bleeding scab that he had opened up but was roaring to go upon return. Maybe my demeanor changed his mind or maybe the fact that he fell on a 5.8, but he soon decided to call it quits as well. We left with over 1.5 hours left in the comp.
I wasn't concerned about leaving (we still got to submit scores), but this wasn't how I imagined a climbing competition would go. With little interaction with others, not knowing anyone's scores (or even seeing most people in the dark), the late night, and the headlamps, this felt much more like an event than a competition. I would have preferred a shorter timespan or just fewer routes to choose from. In the end, I could have kept doing easier 5.9's and racked up points, but I had no desire to compete and feared hurting myself. Nevertheless, I'll consider doing other comps.
POST-EDIT: Ended up 19 out of about 30, not bad for doing quite a few fewer routes than everyone above me (and most below).