Surviving Injuries and Competing: My Experience at the British Bouldering Championships

As British Bouldering Championships is coming up this weekend
I thought I’d do a little story time as to
how I ended up in the ambulance tent at last year’s event
so you know
it started pretty well I’d done well in qualis
I made it to semi finals and then came this red boulder
somehow managed to fall off and then like
put my knee into a knee bar while falling off
and scrape my entire leg down the black volume
so obviously I’m mid competition
I don’t really know what to do
I just decided to like put loads and loads of tape on my leg
so I basically just whipped out the roller tape
wrapped up my leg unsurprisingly
the tape was very unsuccessful
and by the end of boulder 3
my leg was just bleeding through it
so this paramedic comes rushing up to me and he’s like right
we need to bandage this up
but I’m like well
you better be quick because I’ve got to get on Boulder four like
nothing was gonna stop me from competing
so this man bless him
he’s like antiseptic
wiping it bandage
get up and I’m just like hurry
hurry I need to
I’ve only got four minutes
like hurry up
anyway he
he does this like the bandage situation
which it worked for the for the time being
but afterwards after I finished the climb
they were like yeah yeah
this is not hygienic we need to go to the ambulance tent
okay this is a bit grim
but this is what it looked like straight after the ambulance tent
they basically wiped it up and then said like
you’re good to go somehow I made it to finals
but if you know climbing
you know that you’re not allowed to compete while bleeding
so I basically just stuck loads of hydrocolloid plasters on it
and hoped for the best
luckily didn’t hold me back too much and I did manage to come third
but I was in pain for days to come
like this was the Monday after
it was actually it was actually like
it kept like
pussing and it was actually just horrible
the worst part is I did exactly the same injury again in may this year
I’m just hoping that I don’t do it again at British Championships this weekend