START A FIRE

So on tuesday two things happened. First, the good: I finished mounting and setting up my Metolius hangboard. So now I have started finger strength training and lockoffs. I’m stoked about that. Unfortunately that night when I went bouldering at Dallas Rocks, I popped off of the top of 1st Sister wall and roll right over my ankle and sprained the ever-living-fuck out of it. I was climbing at my strongest I have so far. I was finishing a V6 I had just started working on which felt amazing and I came two moves away from sending a new V7 they just put up. I also sent two more V5s which felt great. All was going well. So I took a break and decided to climb a lower rating. I was just enjoying the climb, not paying any particular attention to my footwork as I should have, when I’m on the final hold (a really tiny crimp) and my feet popped me off of the wall. Normally I just hit the crash pads and it’s all good, but this time my entire body weight rolled over my right ankle. I saw it go sideways, heard and felt a loud pop and then proceeded to yell out curse words for all of the young Southern Rocks team to hear. My friend Addison Kim, who is going to Colorado for nationals in a week, needed to continue training because he wants to kill this year. He offered to drive me immediately to hospital, but I told him, “No man, you’re going to nationals! Train hard! I’ll just ice and rest and enjoy watching you guys climb. We’ll go when you’re done.” So and hour and a half pass by and my ankle swelled up to the size of a softball. I wound up at The Medical Center of Plano where I got an X-Ray. It was possibly the best hospital experience I’ve had so far. My mother called ahead for me and turns out her friend Holly was waayyy up there in the hierarchy of things, so she sent me a gift basket while I was waiting on the xray results. Turns out my best friend’s dad is also a surgeon’s first assistant at that hospital, so he helped me pick up my meds and drove me home to my apartment. The night couldn’t have gone better for such a disappointing injury. 

I was just sooo bummed about it because I have really been seeing strides in my strength recently (not to mention I was getting much more flexible from my yoga class and my stretching, alignment and conditioning class). All of my friends are all bouldering on the sick new problems that were just put up, they’re buildering, and lead climbing. ALL OF IT WITHOUT ME. AHHH it’s soo depressing. I’m a busy body and not meant to be hobbling all over the place asking for rides and for people to get me shit because I can’t walk practically. Luckily though, I have my hangboard so I can continue getting stronger and I can do my core workouts on my own without further injuring my ankle. 

Getting to class has been made significantly harder. Campus seems soo much begger when you’re on crutches. hahaha in all honesty, I wish my ankle had just made a clean break because that would have been a faster heal time. Not to mention, a sprain like this can take awhile to recover from and it’s much more likely to be a recurring injury. Super bummed. Anyways, once I can put weight on my boot, I’m going to just top rope a lot with one foot and campus stuff. We’ll see how it all goes. I’m praying it only takes another three weeks to heal.

Bleck. I’ll post a picture of my ankle in a minute.