Keegan Cole is a busy young man.

This week, he began his freshman year at Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute, where he plans on studying biomedical engineering. Today, he'll fly to Sydney to compete in the Youth World Rock Climbing Championships.

The Salem High graduate, a Windham resident, has quite a resume. He placed 17th and was the top American finisher at last year's event, which was held in Ibarra, Ecuador.

At July's National Rock Climbing Championship, Cole took first in the speed final, beating the second-place finisher by 21/2 seconds. Impressive, considering that most speed climbs take less than 10 seconds.

This week we caught up with the expert climber, who's also an accomplished distance runner; he ran the Boston Marathon once and the Marine Corps Marathon twice.

So how would you explain speed climbing to the uninitiated?

"It's all plastic wall competition. You're in a harness. Everything's roped off. (The wall is usually) 15 meters tall. It depends on the gym."

Have you ever taken any falls?

"Never any serious ones. If done correctly it's pretty safe. If you're doing a different type of speed climbing (outdoors), when you take a fall doing that, you fall a lot farther."

So how did you get into climbing?

"I went to Boy Scout camp in the sixth grade. I fell in love with climbing. Then I started at Boulder Morty's in Nashua. I couldn't get enough."

You went to Ecuador last year for a competition. What was that like?

"Better than I expected. When we were looking into buying tickets and hotels, we said to ourselves, 'Who would ever pick Ecuador for a family vacation.' It was really fun. Colorful. All the markets were colorful. People were super friendly. We went mountain biking down a volcano."

What are your feelings about missing school to go to Australia?

"I'm very excited. Throughout the whole competition season, I wasn't in the mindset that I was going to go to Australia. Just for yuks, after I got the invitation at nationals, I called up my school, I had no idea who I wanted to talk to. An advisor patched me right through to the dean of students. He's on my side, he wants me to go. He wants to work with me to make it happen."

Would you like to see rock climbing in the Olympics?

"Absolutely. It was an exhibition sport in the last Olympics. It's been a really drawn-out process, the negotiations with the (International Olympic Committee). They don't like the fact that there's no world records like in track or swimming. You can't do that with climbing, every wall is different. Right now, 2016 seems like a really sure bet though. That's what all the organizers are saying."