Breakthrough

Tonight was a definitely a 'breakthrough' session.

The works was very hot, it’s getting to that point of the year when all the glass in the building starts being a problem, this happens twice a year. Once where you freeze your nads off trying to climb, and secondly, where even shirts off for power can't stop the sweat from pouring down your forearms.

Nat and I started on the browns but I quickly became bored, they're a good set. The new pink tufa problem on the comp wall was pretty funky as well; all of the bobbles were a bit of a pain with two fingers taped together so I didn't bother trying too hard. Dave M was down taking the adult improvers class and Nat decided she could probably learn something from him instead of me just telling her to lock it deeper. I climbed on the board with James and Rich but quickly realized that it wasn't big or clever and that really, it’s pointless trying. A quick hang from the Beastmaker confirmed that I should have definitely gone for the 1000 and that I can back 3 and front 3 but mid 2 (and I'm guessing) back 2, are still out.

Tonight I made 3 variable ice packs by filling sandwich bags with washing up liquid and freezing them. They only partially freeze and stay gel-like which is good for using on finger injuries. Plus, as Dan points out on the BM Blog, you don't suffer from bath skin. With my already terrible skin this is a definite bonus.

The fact that Dave thought I seemed to be going well tonight gave me some perspective and is maybe one of the main reasons that I'm being so positive about it. I ticked a few yellows that had been bugging me and came painfully close to another red. It’s a hard one, on the steepest section of the inner 'room'. I think it would have been ticked if I'd dared to slap for the small edge up high. Common sense kicked in as the chance of my fingers opening up on it was quite high, I backed off.

Today Nat and I decided to get our diets back in order. Recently with being quite busy we've been taking the easy option a lot and not cooking as much. Couple that with a lot of birthdays in quick succession and the accompanying meals and we've indulged a bit too much. I haven't changed weight or anything I just don't like it, plus whilst not 100% focused on climbing I can concentrate that side of myself towards leaning out. For no particular reason just that sick self belief that I know I can eat 'clean'.

Work is going well; I'm making breakthroughs there too. I'm back up to 4 working licenses and I've resolved some issues I've been having.

Homeowner

I don't know whether this is worth celebrating or not but last Friday we completed on our flat. It made financial sense given what we now pay is significantly less than the rental price of the same flat.

Works soon, another frustrating session no doubt but all in the name of rehab.

Works?

I was at the works tonight, the session went OK but was quite frustrating. The fingers spent the whole session taped together and I felt little in the way of pain, BUT, I spent most of the session giving up. Half way up things and sometimes before even pulling on. I've become aware that my thoughts at the end of the last session that I might be able to try relatively hard were not accurate. For some reason I can't crimp hard, a bony little problem had my pants down today I just knew it was going to hurt so had to admit defeat. Sessions like this are frustrating but that's the nature of the game I guess when you're injured? Improvement is slow but that's to be expected.
Next time I'm at the supermarket I'm buying a bumper pack of washing up liquid to mix up some Varian ice packs.

Shiny!

Well my birthday present arrived today... just as i was going out!

Here it is:





I've just spent a while getting it set up how I like it and removing all the manufacturers crap.

Today on the tram I watched as a disabled man in an electric wheel chair drove over the foot of a blind man and then remark that it was his fault for not getting out of the way! Jeez, the guy is stood still and f*cking blind, I couldn't believe it. Is it naive of me to think that wheelchair bloke might be more sympathetic towards another disabled person than the average joe? What a twat.

Testing Testing 1,2,3...

Tonight I needed to go to the works to offload my bags full of resin, it seemed sensible that as I was going to the climbing wall I might as well punter about and see where I'm at. After all, if the worst comes to the worst, the works is always a good place for a bit (a lot?) of a natter (in fact I think it does this best).
Over the last few days I've been unable to think about a much else apart from climbing. I've been reminiscing about days spent at Kilnsey, minor epics when I dare to do trad and my long nights spent beavering away on a cellar boards. Walking into my building this morning (ok, afternoon, late afternoon) I was thinking about pullups and getting psyched out of my mind.
I can only take this as a good thing, climbing isn't lost for me I've just hit another set back and although there have been many, a lot of them haven't actually been climbing related. After reading Keith's latest blog post the other night I got mildly depressed and started missing progress. I was feeling that for the best part of two years, there has been none at all but in reality that's not true. This christmas in Font I climbed the best I've ever climbed, not grade wise, thats irrelevant in this instance. I was moving well on he rock and getting up things that really didn't 'suit' what people generally think of as the type of things that fit me well. Maybe thats why Noir desir still remains one of my proudest moments to date in climbing, it showed that progress, a slight tipping of the scales as Keith put it, towards redressing the balance between all of my hard hours of training and my often neglected technique.
Recently in Albarracin I climbed well, I wasn't floundering and I generally felt like I was reading things well. My base level is significantly higher than it was two years ago and I'm less narrowly focussed towards one type of problem; basic and crimpy.
With Bonjoy this winter, I got involved with a route that if the grade sticks will be my hardest trad lead to date, my ascent wasn't ground breaking but its something that I'm very pleased with. The whole freezing affair was great fun with the BOY.
All in all I can't argue with that... Ok so I haven't been travelling the world, I missed my Europe trip and have yet another injury, but progress is there, lurking in the background. I just needed to learn that progression isn't necessarily always done at your top end. Bringing up your base level or attacking weaknesses are equally as valid and in the future they will move that glass cieling just a smidgin higher.
The climbing psych wasn't as high when I finally got to the works tonight, resin just isn't that appealing when you've just had a trip, add to that hordes of people and a fair dose of heat and I was feeling less positive.
Being sensible, I warmed up on greens but rapidly became bored. Stu suggested buddy taping as cross loading the sheath is apparently what causes the pain. He was right. I climbed like that for the rest of the night with a good deal less hassle than before. Its not perfect and there are certain things that two fingers taped together prevent but the session was in the end, a good one. I ticked the hard stuff on the comp wall, did a fair few yellows and even cheekily (when Dr Pinch had left) ascended the mother board.
I'm going to manage this injury properly, climbing may have to take a back seat but its not geting kicked into touch. Not this time!

D.I.Y. Finished

4 days of hard work, a lot of sawing, even more painting and the spare room is complete.

Behold my spangly new monitor!

D.I.Y.

The board is dead! Two days to build, another to put the holds on yet only 4 hours to completely remove it. Just because a board will physically fit in a flat, don't imagine that it won't get in the way. The rest of the place rapidly turned into a dumping ground, it had to go! (Plus everything we recently signed to do with the Mortgage suggested a big heap of wood in your flat was a No-No).

So, after re-hurting myself I'm taking it easy for a while, I thought I might be able to go to Swiss with Dob and the rest of them but unfortunately not. A little gutting I have to be honest.
As the spare room is now empty and I'm not doing much in terms of exercise, Nat and I have seized the opportunity to actually make the board room into a useful room. The amount of effort required to do so is ridiculous and I'm not looking forward to it. However, not having a spare moment to think at the minute makes the whole non-climbing thing unimportant.

Last Friday Nat had a bombshell dropped on her by her boss "Sooo Natalie, how do you fancy working from Libya"... Nice! Now she's actually been given the information about the job it doesn't seem bad but seeing as though Friday was my birthday and her boss wanted an answer on the Monday we weren't too pleased.

Options

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Has time spent in the gym doing weights furthered the imbalance between my fingers and my upper body? We all know tendons take much longer to strengthen and heal yet almost every injury phase I find myself keeping myself in shape in some form of gym. I do love climbing, bit I seem incapable of being content without something to throw my energy into 100%, (un)fortunately that has never been work.

Addicted to Injury

Tonight I hit an all time motivational low. Warming up at the works my finger/hand hurt on almost every hold type. Crimp, open, pinch, sloper you name it, it didn't feel quite right. Further down the line even jugs weren't even playing ball. After a short time it improved and some major motivation was coming my way from a number of psyched individuals (of varying strength), so I tried to make the most of my evening.
I ended up on the 6b ish thing with white/blue/red holds. It isn't hard. We did it one way, then we tried it using another sequence. Left foot high, hit the pinch with my left hand. BANG! OW! OW! I swear my feet didn't even touch the floor before I was headed in the direction of the loo's. The pain subsided after a few minutes of cold water but we all know that pain like that just isn't good.
I'm absolutely sick of injury upon injury. It seems regardless of what approach I take my body plays along for a few months, leading me into a position of false hope before some part of it fails. This time I haven't even been training or trying hard indoors whatsoever. That doesn't work either. I'm really struggling with the fact that it seems IMPOSSIBLE for me to get back to the level of strength, fitness and motivation that I had just two years ago. OK, so I've got a fairly high base level and I can probably punter my way at a totally respectable grade in my current state but thats not something I want to do.
I've got unfinished business with HFC and Entree, both of which I feel I would destroy given a few months without a niggle. Staminaband? Staminahumps etc. are all out due to this one and will have to wait, realistically until next season. That's if I ever dare pull onto the latter again.
Last summer I took a long break from climbing... I don't want to do this regularly but it seems to me as if there's no other option.

Aplogies for the fact that I'm almost drowning in self pity. Injuries suck!

Mixologist

As my finger isn't in the best of states, my hand has developed leprosy and the tor isn't seeming overly tempting I doubt I'll do much climbing this weekend.

However, I WILL do a lot of drinking... On the way home from Spain I got psyched to get strong, train hard, put the hours in etc. then I remembered my current injury, got slightly upset and bought a tonne of Rum in duty free.

Thus, I type this with a rather camp (but oh so nice) Raspberry Mojito in my hand.



Here's to injures, present and past!

A (wo)man a van a plan...

Yesterday I was stuck in Warwick listening to a bunch of 4th years who'd misunderstood their brief and thus their work was fairly useless in terms of development (maybe refinement is a better word) of a piece of code. It was a long day, I left at 6 and returned home at 9. Unfortunately, it was all a waste of time.
Currently my hand is suffering from a weird reaction to something. Either it was Sundays mussels, Mondays heavily nutty curry or the leather cream I used to try and undo the damage the hot spell is having on the Punto's steering wheel. Whatever it is I want it to go away so I can feel confident that dipping my hand into a bucket of chalk isn't going to cause lots of irritation. I think my injury could do with some more progressive loading and this isn't helping!

Onto the main point;
Two years ago when I happened to hit the mats in an unfortunate position, messing myself up, one of the first things to pass through my mind was the fact that my end of uni summer climbing tour wasn't going to happen. In fact, I believe it was the first thing I said to Nat when she got over to me. I was devastated about that. Even more so when the day came to sell the van which I had hunted high and low for.
This trip, we bumped into a number of people we knew from Sheffield all of whom were travelling around in vans and having the time of their life. Finally Nat realised what she'd missed out on and maybe this was the first admission of how much she's really been enjoying climbing since starting. So, she hatched a plan.
In our industry Chartership matters. Once you have this qualification you're employable and people want you. Currently she's being offered great opportunities left right and centre, one of which is to co-author some major design standards that will be highly influential for the foreseeable future. Funnily enough this also involves my PhD supervisor who is also keen to persuade Nat that a part-time PhD would be great. Chartership isn't far off for her and at this point (2 years or so) she plans to ask for a sabbatical, if its not granted she's going to quit.
Its really reassuring when she turned round to me and explained her mighty plan as to be brutally honest I wasn't seeing it happening she's just been doing too well...