First day back in it

I wrote this post March 16th and never published it. I don't remember why I chose not to, but I like it.

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Today was such a good day.  So much love to Andrew, Carson, Jeph, Trey, and Ryan for sharing this beautiful day with me at Blowing Rock.  Climbing for the first time since surgery in September was really exciting and scary, I'm so lucky to have such caring friends beside me.  The long recovery process was totally worth every ache and pain to get to play on the 5.10 wall in the sun.

Six months ago, I had major shoulder surgery.  When the doctor told me that a six month recovery is a hopeful timeline, I had no idea how to handle everything.  The entire bouldering season was gone.  Snatched from under my nose.  I had so many Southeast projects to do before moving to Colorado this summer, and I had to train to climb out west.  I had to just give all that up and accept what I couldn't change.  I was really upset about missing out on the southeastern winter when Andrew pointed out that March isn't super warm in Boone.  After realizing that I might be able to catch the last of the cold weather, I entered my recovery process with a vengeance.  I focused on healthy eating, hydrating, and obsessively did my physical therapy workouts.  And it all paid off.  Today was an amazing end to my recovery and a beginning to so much more work.

Looking back on how afraid I was, it's amazing how far I've come and how much I've accomplished.  It doesn't seem like much to someone else, but I'm so psyched to be climbing on jugs again.  I'm about as strong a climber as I was four years ago, but I don't care at all.  All I need is dry weather, friends, and the amazing Boone rock.

Good friends <3

Blowing Rock sunset

Psyched to be back in the receiving weird stares game!

Yesterday morning my physical therapist cleared me to do hangboard workouts!!! (no more than twice a week and with weight taken off)

So that's exciting.  Really exciting.  I was so nervous I wanted to throw up on the way to the gym.  I lingered before going to the gym in hopes that someone would want to go with me so they could help me figure out my system for taking weight off, but no one was free, so I set off alone.

I kept my hand over my heart to keep it in my chest as I walked into the gym,

and I couldn't control my breathing well enough to be normal.

I ended up just looking really sick, and I felt so lightheaded and dizzy.

I could barely drive to the gym because my head was so full of fuzzy things rolling around,

and when I finally got there I had to sit in the car to collect myself and not throw up.

I could barely see as I walked to the desk to fill out a waiver for 2015.  My eyes were so unfocused.

I was like Cindy waiting for dinner

I couldn't even plan my hangboard session out before I went because every time 

I thought about dipping my hands in chalk, blowing, and touching holds

I wanted to puke from excitement and nervousness. 

There was a river running through my brain that rushed

too quickly to follow

and thinking about anything made me dizzier.

I hyperventilated for a while unpacking my bag 

really slowly, hand still over my heart.

I couldn't bring myself to do anything except fumble with my carabiners and cord, tying unsuccessful eight knots.

Everything felt so surreal and didn't make any sense to my rushing head, and my eyes still didn't see.

Nothing seemed real as I clumsily unrolled my chalk pot,

dropped it, and picked it up again.

The moment of clarity finally came 

as I blew chalk off my hands and looked up

My first hangboard session was kinda terrible and made me remember that being high maintenance sucks.  Rigging up a pulley system in a crowded gym is a bad decision, and I will definitely be doing it again on Monday.  I didn't do a real workout because I was freaking out so much beforehand and was still kinda dizzy.  I just warmed up and held holds and tried not to cry from happiness.  I did repeaters on slopers and one arm lockoffs on my good arm.  And I told random people over and over again that this was a system to take weight off me because my physical therapist told me to, and no I don't need help; yes, please leave me alone.  

I was there for a total of an hour maybe, and around 30 minutes of that was spent setting up or talking to curious people.  But I wasn't sore the next day and my shoulder felt fine!  I'm so excited to begin the process of getting back into climbing.  I've worked to heal my shoulder for the past four months and I can hardly believe that it's time to start transitioning into climbing again.  This went by a lot faster than I thought it would before surgery.  I know that I'm far from finished with this and I'm just now getting into the really hard part, but I'm ready.  I'm so ready to listen to my body and work hard to keep my healing in balance to make a full recovery.  I'm not going to let being too psyched get in the way of becoming totally healed.  I'm enjoying right now, and the experience of starting fresh.

Deep thoughts inspired by Andrew's woody session music choice

Kyle Rhoads photo, Jeph Verner crushing

What sticks out in my mind as the most beautiful thing I've ever done is Sherman Photo Roof.  That one move out to the ear, after matching through those starting crimp moves, dropping down into the secret undercling, and moving my feet out onto Nose Candy.  That move is so beautiful.  Everything has to be tight and perfect.  It's still in my head from last January as the rest of the day, the end beta, where I put my feet to start, how to send felt, has all faded.  That one move is what haunts my daydreams and is somehow etched into my eyelids, so so beautiful.

Kyle Rhoads photo

What I would be doing

This post was just a title until right this second.  I made this title when I was super bitter about not being able to climb, and I was going to write a tirade about the boulders I would be falling off of, the routes I would be looking at but probably still not climbing, and all the campus rungs I would be pulling through on.  But that would be miserable to read/write/think about.  (I do think about it allllllllll the time.  I look at the ticklist and training plan I had planned for this season multiple times a day and it's a moment of sadness before I move on because you can't change things by being sad about it.)

~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~

Right now I'm sitting in Espresso News, starting hour five of being in the same chair, and I'm thinking of all the things I could be doing.  I could be across the street, training at the src.  Or I could be at Horse Pens, $50 poorer, but happily exhausted after a long day of climbing on new rock with great friends.  Or I could just be home.  Or I could be at the zoo, petting camels.  Maybe I'd be in Italy drinking wine and eating bread with olive oil.  (That was a stretch)

But the point is, I could always be doing something else; we could all always be doing something else.  But we're doing what we're doing, so let's enjoy it.  I'm listening to these two older men have a really interesting, but mostly nonsensical, intelligent sounding argument, and it's pretty cool.  Sure, I'd way rather be training or hanging around a campground with my friends, but I'm not.  And I'm okay with that.

He's okay with it too

What's that cliché saying?  Be where you are?  I don't know, you get what I'm saying.

NRG Craggin Classic 2014

I took this picture of the longest single arch bridge in the western hemisphere in like …2008.  When I went to the New River Gorge with my Mom and took way better pictures with my super cool red digital camera than I did this time with my expensive grown up camera.

I took exactly no good pictures of the bridge or the mountains this weekend.  Here are two with unfortunate lighting that are the best I could do.

The path home from Fayetteville Station.  We squished a penny on the tracks!

But I took some better climbing pictures

Andrew looking zen before the One, Two Punch! (aka One, Two, Double Dyno in Andrew speak)

Melise figuring out beta on Black

Andrew off the deck on Sunshine Arete, starting the send train in some cray Tenaya demo shoes

Juliet finishing strong on Way of the Gun

A lot of the boulders at the New were really big and had low angle slabs up top, which seemed scary and cool.

I wrote the beginning of this post right after coming home from West Virginia, but unfortunately didn't finish it until now, after my surgery.  So real quick: The Craggin Classic was  awesome.  I would love to go again; it was full of good friends and nice people.  Matt Wilder gave a really interesting slideshow that was really inspiring.  I never knew how crazy strong he is and how much he likes to dress up.  A bunch of companies were there to demo gear and put things in the silent auction (I won some stuff!!  For $41 and some begging I left the silent auction with a Misty Mountain "mini fashion chalk bag", Misty shirt, a gear loop from Neon Climbing, a Petzl climbing dvd, and so much J-tree that my lips will never be chapped again and I have no excuse for rough hands ever.)  I was super psyched to demo approach shoes since I couldn't climb, but no companies had approach demo shoes small enough for me :(  But no worries!  Because Andrew demoed so many climbing shoes and I tried a bunch on before we left for the day.

Overall: fun times, gear, lovely people, awesome place, you should go!

Step One

Ever since I got too psyched and tried again and again and again to do Love Rocket with the boys I’ve been having some weird shoulder pains.  I couldn’t do anything harder than warming up on flat walls, and I couldn’t dead hang without pain.  I also couldn’t do things that required me to put my hands behind my back or in the air, like put on a shirt.  After a month of lying to myself and everyone around me, I admitted that I was injured and went to the doctor to get an MRI.  I was sure that I was going to have to go through physical therapy and be fine in two months max. 

Today, I got the results back: extensive superior labrum tear, which the doctor explained was no big deal if I was fine with never climbing again.  I am far from okay with even thinking of that, so he suggested surgery.  The doctor explained that surgery will completely fix my problem, and I’ll be able to continue my climbing like the injury had never happened in about six months.   The next six months, aka, Bouldering Season in the Southeast, aka, the most important thing to ever occur.  My injury ruins everything Andrew and I have planned for the next six months!  We were supposed to get strong and healthy, climb in Boone in the fall, split December between Arkansas and Rocktown, then Chattanooga in the spring.  Triple Crown.  CCS.  My entire life is climbing.  And the other entire part of my life that I don’t like nearly as much is running, which I won’t be able to do for three months post-surgery.  All I have left is my job at Starbucks and going to my four classes at UT.  What a horrible, miserable existence.  No training, no climbing, no running.  I haven’t even gotten to use my new beastmaker that I drooled over until I could afford to buy it.  I’m still staring at it dreaming of tackling the 45-degree slopers and getting super strong on pockets.  All the things I dreamed of doing this season, which I’m totally fine with sharing now that they’ll never happen.  I was most psyched on Residential Streetmap, a burly compression problem at Blowing Rock.  Bitch, also at Blowing Rock, which is a super fun balance-y throw move to latch a crimp(jug) followed by a mantle that's hard for me.  Left Out at Grandmother, which is a beautiful, usually wet, crimp line that nobody really likes as much as I do.

And I had a secret desire to project Portobello and Riverdance.  All dreams that won’t come true.

And then I realized that I was looking at this all wrong.

I was just thinking of all the things I’ll be missing out on, all of which had to do with bouldering itself.  I have amazing friends, and family, and climbing isn’t the only thing that happens outside.  I can still be with my friends and stare lovingly at boulders without climbing them.  I can focus on other things that will affect my climbing when I finally get to touch rock again.  I can put my energy into teaching myself how to eat healthfully for my body.  There are so many different ways people eat; I want to find the one that fits me, and what’s a more perfect time to do that than when I have nothing else to do for six months?  I was also thinking of picking up some kind of art, like watercolor, to pass the time.  The point is: I’m stuck with this for six months, only six months!  I’m going to be fine, and as much as I feel like it is right now, this is not life altering or Earth-stopping. 

I’m going to be fine.  And deciding to be fine is the first step to really being alright.  Everything else will come with time, and I’ll figure it out along the way.  As Melise said in a recent(ish) post on her blog, “The climb will always be there. I will not. With my fragile, accident prone, chuffer body I need to remember to take care of myself and that nothing, not even *climbing*, is worth being stripped of physical capabilities. I will rest, and in good health I'll take it down. Until then, one XL serving of nutella plz…”