Our tiny village home of Santa Engracia (no cars allowed in town) perches atop a hillside 12 kilometers outside of Tremp. We live in a labyrinthine stone fortress near the top of the hill, just below the church.
Things are looking way up for me on this trip after the past two days of climbing – yes, climbing! At last, after two weeks of sitting on my bum feeling sorry for myself, I ventured out to the crag on Wednesday. We went to St. Llorenç de Montgai, an area about an hour from here. The mobility and dexterity in my left hand had improved significantly. Though definitely not back to normal yet, I could pass my self-imposed “requirement-for-climbing” tests. I promised myself not to climb anything hard for me, and only to climb on top rope, since the No. 1 thing to avoid for me right now is any chance of an impact from falling and putting my hand out, since that’s what triggered this whole mess to start with.
It went decently enough on day one; I felt weak and unbalanced, of course, but that’s to be expected after nearly two stressful weeks off from climbing. The best part about this day was that it was warm and sunny and at least I was out climbing and laughing with my friends, even if I only climbed three super-easy pitches on top rope. I can’t overemphasize how important the warm and sunny part of this is to me; I loathe being cold (I envision my similarly cold-tolerance-impaired mother smiling and nodding in empathy/agreement as she reads this, ha! Thanks for the genes, Mom!), and being cold AND injured and out at the crags is a lethal combination for me. I even enjoyed just being able to belay Kevin again, honestly. Simply being his partner again at the crag brightened my world.
Yesterday, I felt completely exhausted from the moment I got out of bed. I’m not sure why – if it was a relaxation from the stress of the past couple weeks, or just from not sleeping too well (I haven’t been sleeping all that well here), or a result of climbing after not climbing, or maybe a combination of all those things. I didn’t feel sore or climbing-tired, and my hand felt better (making me feel even more certain that it was the airport fall that retriggered my nerve impingement, rather than climbing).
We went to climb at Terradets, the closest crag to our place in Santa Engracia. It was a gorgeously sunny and warm day once again. I decided to play it safe and only top rope again – not only from fear of impact but also, because clipping and unclipping draws with my left hand is still an enormous challenge for me right now – this motion takes more dexterity than grabbing most climbing holds. I top-roped two climbs, and man, were they ever AWESOME! I feel like I finally got a taste of the climbing here, and so what if it was on top rope with a limp-ish hand. At least the hand got better as I went, and feels better today après-climbing than it did yesterday (thank the stars for this!).
The first climb, my warm-up, was a long 7b (12b), and it was just great climbing, even if my crux was sorting out how to unclip every bolt without flinging the draws down onto the heads of unsuspecting climbers walking below. The second, a 7c+ (13a), was also fantastic, a tufa-ridden excursion with an awesome steep ‘n’ juggy overhang at the top. I struggled with the fat tufa part of this route a bit, not wanting to overexert my left side, and consequently weighting my right arm tremendously, resulting in a heinous pump on that side and a whole lotta taking. Oh well. I definitely have lost the intuitive feeling of and fitness for climbing at the moment, just as I expected I would after two weeks on the couch, but I don’t really mind this so much – both of these things are relatively quick to return, given the right amount of time and space to do so. I’m grateful to be able to climb at all right now, honestly.
My new plan is to rest today, and then head back out to Terradets tomorrow or the next day, depending on what the partners want to do. The 7c+ I tried is the perfect climb to try to regain and build up fitness for here on, whether I can TR or lead it next time – it doesn’t have any huge left-side presses or dynamic moves, and it’s pumpy and more than 100 feet long. I figure I’ll just keep warming up and trying that bad boy until my body feels more evened out and I feel more faith in my left side again and more balanced overall. I felt like I was limping up the rock yesterday, overusing my right arm just as a person who’d twisted an ankle would favor the uninjured side when walking. But there was joy in just being able to climb, for sure, and confidence is on the rise today as I type with more ease than I have in two weeks, after two climbing days, no less.
I have work to do today, but I also have a whack of photos I want to share with you and a new Training Talk following up on that Training Tip about handling injuries…we’ll see how far I can get. But there’s more to look forward to now, both here in my blog and on my trip to Spain overall. I truthfully already feel like it’s more worth it to me, even if I just got the tiniest little taste of the climbing here – it’s better than starving completely, no matter what happens from here on out.
Climbing Training Tip 11: When you’re injured, learn all you can about it. Make healing & rehabbing your No. 1 climbing/training goals.
I feel incredibly calm about my nerve impingement injury situation at the moment, a calm acceptance that has settled over me since the fear of permanent paralysis was alleviated and my hand noticeably improved. It may seem odd that I’m not chomping at the bit to climb or stressing out about the potential of not climbing much or at all on this trip. In fact, it almost seems odd to me that I’m not feeling those emotions and drives. But I honestly don’t feel those feelings. I feel mildly disappointed and bored with my situation, sure – because I’m so accustomed to filling so many of my days with climbing and training for climbing. More than those vague feelings of boredom and disappointment, though, I feel extreme gratitude for the healing progress my body’s made already along with a deep and overriding desire to not do anything to impede its continuance of that healing process.
This makes it easy to sit out climbing day after climbing day here. I’d rather miss a bunch of climbing days now and be able to climb hard later than struggle stubbornly up easy routes with a half-usable hand now and risk throwing my entire year ahead of me away. The cold temps help me stay disinterested, too, honestly, making me glad it’s been an unseasonably cold February here. Knowing it’s too cold for me to climb without my hands numbing out is a wonderful motivator for keeping me on the couch.
I feel like everyone expects me to struggle with this time off, but after the paralysis scare, I don’t feel like it’s much of a struggle at all. It takes however long it takes for my hand to regain full mobility, and I feel quite accepting of that. I’m not worried about “losing everything” because I know from past injuries that this doesn’t happen. I may lose a tiny bit of real strength/muscle if this drags on for months, and I’ll surely lose some endurance fitness and neuromuscular connectivity, but those latter two will return relatively fast when I start climbing again. The former, the strength and muscle, are elements that are relatively tough to gain and therefore pretty tough to lose in any huge way. Bodies don’t want to give up all that work quickly, all the energy that goes into building muscle and strength – so they take a long time to lose. I’ll just lose the opportunity to make gains in these areas while I convalesce, and so be it. I’d rather be whole in the end than make stupid and shortsighted decisions now.
This isn’t the first time I’ve been injured and forced to take time off from climbing. I actually consider myself quite lucky for the relative lack of serious or recurring injuries I’ve experienced throughout my two decades as a climber – no tendonitis ever, and very few injuries that have required any significant time off, save for the armpit-muscle tear in 2006, and a severely sprained ankle in early 2008. As I’ve mentioned before here, both of those injuries turned out to be blessings in disguise, pushing me to make significant adjustments and changes in my life that still resonate positively for me to this day. So of course, I recognize in my current situation here the same type of potential for personal growth and an expanded perspective…now that my fear of losing the use of my left hand permanently or for a lengthy period of time has been dispelled.
Even being able to write out my experience a couple days ago proved cathartic; I hadn’t realized how stifled I’d been feeling – or no, that’s not quite accurate – I did know I felt suppressed and unable to express myself, but I hadn’t quite realized how much better I’d feel after sorting out my frustrations and fears a bit more. I did realize that having significant improvement in my hand mobility would help lighten my mood, and it has helped tremendously, more than I even realized it would. Being able to make dinner last night on my own without worrying about chopping my fingers off or inadvertently flinging vegetables and sauces onto the floor made me quite pleased. Being able to mock the earlier severity of my injury with my friends was nice too (you gotta laugh at this stuff). Because I did throw some stuff on the floor and almost chop some fingers off last week…among other little injury-related mishaps that of course didn’t strike me as humorous at the time.
That’s the thing that I really needed, though, to feel okay and upbeat about the rest of the rehab time, even if it takes my entire Spain trip (or even longer) to happen – I needed my left hand and arm to be good enough that I can use them in daily living tasks, like cooking, typing, brushing my teeth and such. I can deal with not climbing much more easily than I can deal with my left hand being a useless flopping appendage. I can savor the experience of Spain with great friends, gorgeous locales, different/interesting food and people and architecture and sights, and I don’t need to climb to be happy and have a good time, so long as I can at least use my hand without it making me feel totally inept in every task I undertake.
It helps, too, to know for certain that I won’t regret my choice to stay here while I work toward rehabbing it – my greatest fear was that I’d stubbornly stay here only to discover that in doing so, I’d make permanent what could have been a correctable issue if dealt with by going home straight away (an idea planted by the ER doctor and some frightening internet reading on my part).
So, onward! I’m still not even contemplating climbing again until my hand passes three normalcy tests I’ve established for myself, and I’m nowhere near those yet, though I’m much closer to them than I was when this started. It’s funny, though, for me to realize that since I didn’t really have particular climbing-related goals for this trip, seeing as I’d never been to Spain before and didn’t know what to expect, it’s actually the easiest part of my climbing year for me to let go of mentally and emotionally, in terms of that “needing to climb” feeling I sometimes have or that “running out of time to achieve goals” sensation. I also think that the fear of losing use of a limb critical for living normally outside of climbing really puts it all in perspective as far as rushing back into climbing – I really do value the ability to do daily living tasks on my own more than I value climbing, and I’m willing to wait as long as it takes to make sure the nerve is healed enough to handle climbing, rather than rushing back into it and risking round three of “flopping dead hand.” No, thanks!
And one thing I really finally internalized through this past year is that it’s not what I accomplish in a climbing season or at a climbing area that I remember and treasure most of all in the end. It’s more about the people I’m with and the experiences we share in those places and seasons, and how we handles our failures and setbacks as much as our successes and progress. I got way too serious about my summer project and let it determine my experience/enjoyment of climbing and people too much, but I actually learned from that, and I’ve since been far less attached to outcomes and goals impacting my psyche. The fall at the Red was successful in terms of climbing for me, but Kevin’s injury and our consequent inability to share in the climbing experience definitely took away from the joy in that trip for both of us, just as I’m sure my current situation impacts his enjoyment, though I’m trying to support him and encourage him to embrace climbing here as much as he can. It’s just always not quite what you wished for and wanted when your main partner can’t participate with you.
The best time I’ve had climbing recently was the time I spent this winter in the Octagon in Wyoming, with Kevin and Gabe. Neither Kevin nor I sent our projects, but it didn’t matter. We got close and made progress, and that was fun. But the real fun was the laughter and shared joy in the experience of climbing incredibly fun, challenging routes in an amazingly inspiring outdoor setting with loved ones.
For me, that’s the epitome of perfection in rock climbing, when you share your days at remarkable crags with people you love, supporting each other’s efforts and pushing one another, but never taking it too seriously and always remembering that the whole point of this silly human game (of all human games!) is to have fun and share that fun with others. Right now, even if I can’t climb, I can still certainly have fun and share that with others. The climbing will happen again soon enough, in its own time, whenever my body is ready for it again, whether it’s here in Spain or beyond.
