Under the Bleachers
Equinox crag - Voodoo (8c) - Ben Herrington making the long awaited third ascent.
November 1st, 2018 – Tore muscle belly of my
latissimus dorsi in Left arm/shoulder.
By January 2019 I was bouldering V.6/7 and climbing 5.12+ - by March
2019 I was bouldering V.8 and climbing 5.13- - During March went on a week long
trip to Smith and was able to climb Darkness at Noon and Karate Wall. Re-injured L shoulder in May – felt painful/weak
in June – rehabbed through mid-June to July.
Just now starting to feel strong in the Left arm again – still not 100%
- pain/weakness during pull ups and one arm dead hangs. Will continue to rehab and strengthen.
March 1st, 2019 – painful middle finger on L hand
– painful to crimp for long periods of time.
Started taping for support, pain went away after a month. Finger is 100% as of July 15th,
2019 – have stopped taping.
July 1st, 2019 – Middle finger painful on R hand –
sore after climbing and painful to crimp in certain positions. Started taping consistently July 10th
– pain has lessened due to supportive taping but not gone away. After last climbing session finger was sore
and painful – next day finger felt fine – have not climbed on it since July 20th
– will continue to tape for support and monitor.
July 16th, 2019 – R leg MCL sprain – the incident
of the sprain occurred in mid-June during a training session where I executed a
severe drop knee with my R leg and my foot popped out overextending the MCL
briefly and spraining it. It hasn’t
bothered me until last week (July 15th, 2019) – I have noticed pain
during drop knees with my R leg and pain and weakness when flexing the knee
inward and pulling my leg into my body in a clamping motion. Will start to tape for support and ice. First knee injury ever.
Walking to Equinox
Walking to Index
Walking to gelato
I found myself depressed yet again. Disappointed that things had not worked out
the way I wanted them too, seeped in failure.
Was I having fun? One foot in the
pool of determined focus, another foot on the beach of giving-no-shits. The slow oscillation between goal-oriented
motivation and lackadaisical non-investment was driving me crazy. Pushing to exist in both worlds at the same time
was careless and cowardly, and yet I couldn’t choose between the two. The list above was fodder for both mind
states – in one hand being injured (yet again) was motivation to step back,
re-tool my training and approach, and at the same time drove me to become
inspired and focused. I looked to the
future while also vehemently focusing on healing in the present and becoming
stronger. But the wheels kept falling
off. Whether it was just bad luck, bad preparation,
or a bad mindset I couldn’t and still can’t seem to get my head together. This isn’t a post about how I am falling out
of love with climbing – in fact it’s more of a love letter to climbing if anything
– a diatribe dedicated to how much I define myself as a climber. But like all good obsessions (or passions, or
relationships?) there are times when you have to step back from the sun to see
how much damage has been done.
Smith Rock State Park
Latest Rage (7b)
Scarface (8b+)
For the last month, I’ve been in a weird injury induced
depression. Where none of my injuries
have been bad enough to render me a useless quivering blob incapable of
dragging myself to the crag and up a few well-rehearsed routes – but they also haven’t
been healed enough to motivate me to dedicate large chunks of time and energy
to pursuing my goals. I’m also
developing a fierce case of post-highschool peaking syndrome (a neurological
disorder I made up, the gist of which goes something like this: after
graduating highschool the athlete then finds him/herself enamored with past
successes unable to replicate or progress them further into the future and thus
left replaying the glory days on a mental loop). Of course it doesn’t have to be highschool,
that’s just a convenient example to make the analogy work. It can be anything that you previously excelled
at, had a good year doing, and then plateaued or regressed hard and now find
yourself looking at the past and wondering what happened? A syndrome exacerbated by unhealthy mental
approaches to the activity of choice and the envy of watching others progress
instead of focusing on yourself. All of which
I am heinously guilty of. The three year
anniversary of my hardest climb to date is fast approaching and I am drenched
in anxiety surrounding the fact that I haven’t been able to reproduce this
success nor push it forward. It hasn’t
helped that I’ve been injured every single year since this send, but there have
been windows of health that I haven’t taken advantage of either. This is neither meant to be a pity party or
an excuse parade nor is it meant to be a cajoling motivational frat party of
anecdotal positivity-laden clichés. I’m
actually not really sure what the point is (??) except to turn an editorial eye
inwards and examine what can change when compared to what hasn’t.
Little si - Pornification (8b+)
So let’s move forward from here. Bless me father for I have sinned, grant me
the power to accept the things I cannot change and change the things I can,
hail Mary mother of Jesus, Amen.
Equinox - Voodoo
Voodoo
Voodoo
I was right in the middle of urinating when I heard some
powerful screaming. Intent-filled, butt
hole clenching, every muscle fiber stretched and flexed to the max, forcing yourself
upwards against the laws of gravity type of screaming. It was refreshing. So I finished peeing and walked back down to
the shady confines of the wall. ‘I know
that feeling, I love that feeling’ I thought to myself. I miss that feeling. Why don’t I climb like that all the
time? Does it take too much mental
fortitude? Does it take too much
physical energy? Is it an overwhelming
combination of both? This is what separates
the average from the above average – the plateauers from the peek-seekers, the ‘I’m
okay with where I am at’-er’s from the ‘fuck this, let’s live, learn, laugh,
and try hard’-ers. And the part of all
this that mists me with a soft malaise is the memory of being that person,
filling that present space with my vulnerable self and feeling comfortable unleashing
my curiosity in failure. Today I climb
with all the preserved verclemptness of a rigid senior porch dweller, so
clogged up with insecurity and false confidence, unwilling to breathe deeply,
mad at the youthful exuberance of passersby on the sidewalk, yet frozen in
place by fear and a staunch fixation on the past.
A playful approach is missing. Playfulness is often misinterpreted as
careless, or haphazard, or idiotically wayward, failing to capture focus or
intent – but nothing could be farther from the truth. True playfulness is at its core, joy. Playfulness is vulnerability married with
unbridled confidence. Playfulness is
love, it’s purity, it’s spinning in circles in your parents’ kitchen and
laughing at the dizziness that ensues – it’s pretending to be an alien space
craft at the very end of a long day when your feet hurt and you still have a
couple miles to hike until you reach the car – and it is of course freedom. Freedom to be who you are in that moment
unshackled from lengthy expectation or the crippling anxiety of fear and
failure. Because what are you doing this
for? WHO are you doing this for? If it’s for yourself than you should absorb
this playfulness and exude it as readily and as automatically as your heart
mindlessly pumps oxygenated blood throughout your body.
Graduation day - Evergreen State College- June 2019
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