Ankle Update

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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.

Hard Falls

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.

Training – Things I’m Good At and Things I’m Not

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.

Current Training

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.

Crunch Time!

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.