So I went to Europe, competed in Switzerland, Italy and France. I’ve been super lazy since I’ve gotten back though, making all sorts of excuses not to update my blog. I’m going to put it off one more time now too, but I will throw out this bone.
Just before I left I started an Instagram account, and I did update that with all sorts of pretty pictures. So until I get my shit together and write up my reflections on the comp you’ll have to be satisfied with this:
If you wait for everything to be perfect then it never happens.
I have accepted that my ankle is going to have a long healing time. I have also accepted that I am going to make the healing time even longer because I keep climbing and training. I can rest when I’m done Ice World Cup.
Next week I leave for Switzerland. I decided to tack a couple of extra days onto the start of my trip, using up almost all of my vacation for the year, but this way I can sneak in the competition in Saas Fee. I will be showing up jet lagged and worn out and need to be ready to compete by the next morning, but I figure if I’m going to do this world cup stuff I might as well go all in! Three competitions in 18 days…..it’s going to be intense.
If I’m going to be honest though, I am a bit intimidated. The competition in Bozeman went okay, but not as well as I wanted. Since then I’ve still been training with my ankle, but I’ve had to change tactics. No more pushing moves at Neil’s home wall and tumbling to the floor. If I am doing movement training or climbing outside I’ve been taping the crap out of my ankle. Otherwise I’ve been sticking to my smaller training wall, trying to build my strength and endurance, but mostly I’m just trying to maintain the fitness that I built before the Bozeman comp.
One more week and I fly out! Eek! Hopefully I can still get a couple more training sessions in before then.
So I have finished my first World Cup in Bozeman Montana. Definitely an eye opener for me.
First, competition climbing is way more exhausting than I thought it would be. Early mornings to compete and late nights at the venue to watch everyone. You also eat like crap because you never sit down. My diet over the competition was a mishmash of cliff bars, whatever they had on hand for the competitors and samples from vendor booths.
Second, I have a lot to learn. First prelims route I didn’t trust myself and the holds and I climbed quite slow. Second prelims route I resolved to climb faster but didn’t plan out the moves as well and fell when I didn’t plant my feet well enough. I am most disappointed in myself for the semis route though. I came in at 12th place and left at 15th, I could have done better than that. I didn’t plan the moves out well enough and when I found I wasn’t strong enough to pull the move the way I envisioned I didn’t recover and didn’t switch strategies.
I think that the biggest take home for me is that I am not strong enough to climb these routes poorly and still pull through. But I am a good enough climber that I shouldn’t be climbing these routes poorly. If you can’t climb stronger, you need to climb smarter.
Third, travel is harsh! The comp was only two time zones away, but it took us almost 36 hours of travel time to get back to Ontario. Also, running through airports with a cowboy hat and a giant novelty check helps gets you noticed.
I am super excited in how well our team from Ontario climbed though. Nathan made it to semis easy and finished 11th overall, his best showing yet. Neil finished in 30th place and did better than some well known North American climbers. This is fantastic for his first competition. We convinced Stephanie to compete in the difficulty (lead) comp. She didn’t do great in it, but she didn’t expect to. I find her inspirational in how she put herself out there and gave it her best.
Neil and Steph in the prelims.
Hopefully I’ll recover from this comp in the next couple of days, then it’s time to start training for the next one. Italy is just over 6 weeks away!!!
Tomorrow is the prelims for the Ice Climbing World Cup in Bozeman. So before the competition starts I thought I’d talk a bit about the climbing that I’ve done up in Hyalite Canyon.
Not knowing how my ankle was going to be on my ankle I eased into things. My one big goal was the try to red point Straits of Gibraltar. We spend three days up in the Bingo Cave, and to be honest the figure-4s to figure-9s out the roof felt tiring and I didn’t really fell like it was going to go this trip.
On our third day up in the cave I warmed up on Panama Canal, a tricky hard to read route. I misread it a couple of times and blew off when the line of holds I was following ran out.
I went up Gibraltar a couple of times, not really feeling it, but I wanted to get it down to one hang. This was my goal on my second redpoint attempt that day. Figure-4…..figure-9…..crap my tool is stuck! “Kick it!” shouts Nathan. Tool comes loose and thankfully doesn’t fall off the wall. Figure-4, figure-9….figure-4…..my hand is opening up! I had a big move to the last hold and there was no way I was going to make it. Quick toss to an intermediate and then establish on the clipping hold. Send!!!
I couldn’t even do all the moves on this route last year, so I’m super excited to send it. Definitely the hardest drytooling route I’ve sent yet.
The only photo that any one took of me that day…..sorry.
So we made it to Bozeman and I’m hobbling around on my ankle alright. Yesterday we went up to the Bingo Cave and today we went up to the Genesis area to run some laps on our first ice of the season. It’s amazing to think that two weeks ago I was walking out of the hospital with a cast on.
Last week I went back to the hospital for more xrays and had an soft tissue assessment done by my chiropractor, Nichole Smyth. The new xrays didn’t show a fracture this time and Nikki didn’t think it was likely. Thank goodness! I still managed to do a lot of damage so I’m being super careful with it, but at least I’m out climbing!
Every day is feeling better, but I still have some limits on mobility. I won’t be 100% by the time of the Bozeman World Cup comp, but I’ll be climbing and doing my best.
Back to the hospital this morning to visit the fracture clinic. The “possible” fracture ended up being a slight, non displaced fracture of my ankle bone. Fortunately, no more cast, but I’m now wearing a splint and they want me to weight bear as little as possible.
sexy!
So I told them I was on vacation in two weeks. They said I should be okay to walk on it by then. Of course, I didn’t tell them I was going to be walking up hill in the mountains in Montana (doctors don’t seem to understand these things). The Bingo cave is pretty accessible though, so I’ll just take my time and keep my trekking poles handy.
I should still be able to compete, even if it’s not at my full capacity. I may have to continue to wear the brace, but at least I can stuff it into my fruit boot (just kidding, I’ll just get my ankle all tapped up). I’ll definitely be all healed up before the comps in Italy and France, which is more important to me.
For my birthday I wanted to go to St. Alban, Quebec and get some early drytooling in before Bozeman. Day one was cold and we moved slow. Day two I got on Hysterie a couple of times and worked out all the moves, but didn’t quite have it in me to redpoint after spending the day out in the cold.
Hysterie – M9-
Day three I wanted to redpoint something more than my warm ups. Nathan had to do some work on route at the end cave and I started scoping out Plaquee Or, an M8+ on the far left. First go could have been better. There were good holds, but you needed to find them among the bad holds there. It was also steeper than I expected and I need more practice climbing at that angle. It could have been worse though, I worked my way to the top, checking out holds to try to redpoint 2nd attempt.
Next time up I was getting pumped a lot quicker. But I managed the two figure-4s I needed and put my feel into a horizontal crack to get a rest.
My tools were all mixed up though. Last time up I had clipped from this position. I felt my right tool was good, but I needed to get my left hand on the upper grip, a position already occupied by my right hand. The left tool that I placed in order to readjust definitely felt skatey, but I went with it. Big mistake! During the adjustment and a bit of flailing I popped off, with my feet still in the crack.
I wailed as my left foot got stuck. My last clip was still above the crack and I pulled myself up a little on my side of the rope to alleviate pressure on my foot. Things happened fast, but they also were in slow motion. I needed to figure out how to let got of the rope without dropping myself any more so Nathan could pull me up. A tool would have been handy, but I had dropped both of them. I’m not sure what I eventually grabbed, but I was able to let go of my end of the rope and Nathan could take up my weight.
We had been talking how the back spikes of my crampons were nothing but in the way. This is what jammed in the rock on my left boot when I fell. I fell so hard I bent the spike.
We had an 8 hour drive home from Quebec. Nathan was pretty cranky that he had to drive the whole way, but I wasn’t going to be able to work the clutch with my ankle, especially not through Montreal traffic. By the time I got home my ankle looked like this:
We decided to get a good nights sleep and visit Urgent Care in the morning. First check in, then X-Rays. The doctor came over about half an hour after the X-Rays and led me over to the casting room. My heart sank. I only have a “possible” fracture, but they put a temp cast on me anyway.
I go back tomorrow for more X-Rays and to see an Orthopedic doctor. Bozeman is in less than 2.5 weeks. I’m hoping for the best.
Your actual training routine is important, but you also have to take care of yourself. So with that in mind, here is a list of things I’m good at, and things I need improvement on (and like most people, there are more things I need improvement on than things that I’m good at).
Sleep – I fail pretty hard at this one. I’m very bad at going to bed on time, and then even worse at falling asleep. My alarm is set for 6am to get to work for 7am. I’m often running behind because I don’t wake up until 6:30am.
Food – One reason that I’m up so late so often is that I start cooking at 9 at night. So while I’m tired at work, I’m getting a filling and balanced meal for lunch. I am not vegetarian, but I eat very little meat, so I need to be careful about getting enough protein. Some days I’m good at this, some days I’m not.
Water – I don’t know if tea really counts (but I drink a lot of tea). I know I should keep that water bottle filled at my desk at work, but who has time for that!
Cross Training – I mentioned my love affair with my bike this summer in an earlier post. My problem is that when I get into an activity I can get almost obsessive about it, so I have a hard time doing multiple sports at a time. I am super into training for drytooling right now, so I find it hard to make time for things like running. But I have been managing to get to a yoga class once a week. Yes, I could just stretch, but I won’t stretch for an hour without a yoga class. This also helps strengthen opposing muscles with all your chaturangas and down dogs and such.
I just wanted to give a taste of the training that Neil land I are doing right now at his home wall.
Since neither of us have any competition experience we have started setting problems that average 14-15 moves that we try to complete in 7min (which is a typical amount of time given for prelims and semis). If we fall off we hop right back on the wall, because the other aspect of this is to improve our endurance to actually climb for 7min.
I see hold #4, 2, 15…..
The first couple of times I did this I rushed and didn’t even make it halfway through the route we set. A good lesson there for me for the actual comps: I’ll do better if I shake out thinking how to preform the move before I launch into it than just trying to climb fast. Since I don’t know the routes we’ve set very well it is also good practice for me practice onsight climbing, which I admit has never been a strong suit of mine.
Last week we added another element to this routine. At the start of the session we took 7min to each preview a route we hadn’t been on before. After preview we each went through a warm up routine. After the warm up we each climbed our onsight route. This was enlightening, for each of us there were moves we thought would be hard but weren’t really that bad, but also moves that we thought would be easy but completely shut us down.
Action shot of me falling out of a figure-4. This kind of thing happens.
One more thing we work on is clipping while climbing. This is why you see all the draws hanging around Neil’s home wall, or see us climbing with harnesses on. And if you think that clipping isn’t a big deal, things are a little more tricky when you’re hanging out in a figure-4 trying to clip and long, floppy draw with golf gloves on.
Bozeman is getting close! Less than 5 weeks left for training and less than 6 before the comp! We’ve also been pretty busy getting trying to get promotional material together for our fundraising efforts.
One awesome thing going on is the support that we’re getting from Outland Adventure Gear in Orangeville, Ontario: http://www.outlandadventuregear.ca/
Nathan and I will be sporting some Rab MeCo 165 shirts for our World Cup jerseys and Outland is donating the profits of their Rab Meco sales to me and Nathan and IWC until the end of December. It’s a great product and I encourage everyone to check it out their store.
Other wise, I’ve been spending a lot of time climbing with Neil at his place when Nathan’s not available. Neil is also doing Ice World Cup this year, planning to compete in the same comps as me (Montana, Italy and France). His wall is fairly small, but I feel like we’ve been making some good use of it.
future crusher?
Neil’s a great training partner, we’re fairly close to the same level (though he’s a pretty good athlete and his drytool training is really paying off!) and having the same goals really keeps us focused.
Mixed Progression 