Old man river's log

I tried a scuba diving yesterday.
It turned out to be over-ambitious. Getting onto a bouncing boat, in a dry suit, over an unstable pebbled beach, with heavy kit on proved too much for my ankle.

It was pretty sore after that for the rest of the day. Today, I didn't try to dive but have walked a lot; I am currently on 12 miles including uphills, downhills and dodgy terrain underfoot. So it feels like a progression towards recovery again.

If the weather is nice tomorrow, I may have a second crack at diving

I'm finally close to bring fixed. It was really painful a week ago on Tuesday, when I went into the office. I was moving very slowly and limping a lot.

I vaguely considered going to the doctor's. Instead, I concentrated on trying to walk without a limp, and moving as fast as possible. This seems to have been vaguely successful; I did 10 miles' walk on Saturday. I'll try swimming tomorrow and climbing on Wednesday.

I finally got around to swimming. My gym cancelled my earlier two bookings with no explanation.

The first 5 or 6 lengths were hard; I was doing breaststroke and my ankle complained about the rotational movement. After that, it must have sufficiently stretched, so it felt good. I did 500 metres, so not far, but it was before work and I was time constrained.

Later, I did a 5 mile walk. I was pretty fast by my injured standards, and pain free. So I decided to see if climbing was possible. This was over-ambitious; it felt painful so I didn't last long or climb hard .

I went diving today. It was was just quarry dives: I wanted to check my ankle was Ok, and I had a drysuit back from repair I wanted to test. I'm also still not completely used to sidemount. My buoyancy was good; my drysuit was dry; its was fun.

I did a 6 mile walk afterwards.

Random stats update:
Weight 142 pounds.
BP 110/70

Monday
I went climbing. It was way better than my first effort post stain, on Friday. I lasted 2 hours, and worked my way up till some easy v3s. My ankle hurt, but held up pretty well.

Tuesday
1 km swim before work

Thursday
I managed 10 miles' walk and a climb today. Again, I got some easy v3s. I',m not at full fitness, but slowly getting there. The ankle hurt a little whilst climbing, but not as much as Monday; and recovered instantly on reading afterwards.

I've been working on my ankle rehab, which has been going OK but slowly. I seemed to recover reasonably quickly for most things; climbing is proving to be the slowest. I suspect that climbing puts a lot of strain on the ankle. I had one session a couple of weeks ago, where I climbed for 2.5 hours and was limping heavily by the end. Walking to the station afterwards seemed to be good, and I had recovered by the time I got there.

Yesterday I climbed for 2 hours, and did OK. It wasn't my best effort, but my best since the injury and not too shabby.

I went climbing yesterday. It was fun; I was finally in form and my ankle didn't hurt. It was a training session: we were trying our anti-styles. I got two overhanging, powerful v4s. 2.5 hour session.

Yesterday, I did a 10 mile walk, then went climbing for 2.5 hours. It was fun; I was in good form. I seem to be back to the form I was in pre-injury. My ankle was slightly swollen at the end, but not painful. (I can do pistol squats again.)

I went climbing on Saturday. 3 hour session; it was fun. I climbed OK.

I did a 21 mile walk today; from my house to Bushy Park and back. The park was shut due to high winds.

At one point, there was a sign saying "footpath closed". This struck me as inaccurate: for example, I was I on the path. Therefore it was not closed. It was clearly more of a suggestion than an order.

However, by a strange coincidence, the mud did get to just below my knees at that point.

Part of the reason for the walk was to test my hypothesis that my ankle is fixed. It didn't hurt, so there may be validity to the notion.

I found a cave! Trip report incoming..

There were tight bits in the cave; I was crawling backwards for this photo

We found the cave on Saturday.

It was a bit Victorian; I was in charge of navigation so we were a bit lost and nowhere near where we were aiming at. But there was a waterfall with a hole in the ground, so we slid in to investigate.

We didn't push it on Saturday; it was all a bit potentially collapse-y. We came back on Sunday, and thought "**** it", so pushed it. We got around 100m of new passage, never seen by man before. (There were quite a few bats, though.)

There is strong potential for digging.

I went climbing on Monday. I was poor.

I went climbing yesterday for 3
.5 hours, and got a 15 mile walk in. I was stronk, it was good.

Friday
Lifting. Squat (70 kgs); bench (50 kgs); deadlift (100 kgs). All 3 sets of fahve. I also hangboarded; my fingers are strong at the moment.

Body weight: 64 kgs.

Saturday
Climbing, 3.5 hours. Good fun; although I only got a couple of v4s I got loads if V3.

Sunday
13 mile hike

Monday
Climbing, just over 2 hours. Decent, I got a v5.

Tuesday
Lifting. I am old and weak. But I did 2*bodyweight deadlift for 3 sets of fahve.

I also benched, hangboarded, squatted and finger curled. I love finger curls, you can go pretty heavy easily (I did 60 kgs).

Thursday
Climbing.
Good fun, I got a lot of new routes. I tried videoing a v3-ish slab. It looked really easy, but I've seen quite a few good climbers fail on it. (The foot swap us hard, then there are no hand holds after the step over, reaching for the left hold.,) It seems I need to add it YouTube to show here, which will take me a while.

Saturday
Caving. We attempted to survey the cave, and did a light spot of digging at the end.

The surveying wasn't completely successful. Some readings gave a negative distance. I think my calibration of the device wasn't accurate enough. (Calibration takes 24 readings with specific orientations of the device. You need to do it away from metal. My first two attempts got matrix not positive semi definite errors; the next attempt got a NaN result; the next got 2% error. The UI told me I should aim for less than 1%, but I ignored it.)

Sunday
Caving; digging. We attached the spoils tray to rope so had quite a slick system between the digger and the spoil man.

Monday
Climbing. Went hard, it was fun. My biggest success was a V4 flash.

Thursday
Climbing, 2.5 hours.
Good fun, I got a couple of projects. The most fun one was thuggy v4 overhang, going from a cave to a less steep wall. The crux took me about 30 minutes to work out. I needed to heel hook the left foot, which let me get enough momentum for a big hand move. I cut loose with the foot immediately, which generated momentum for the next hold (which was also far away).

I went climbing yesterday. It was fun, I got a lot of v4s. My favourite wasn't yet graded; my guess it's a v3; but it was complex so may be a v4.

It was slab. My little brother gave me beta. (Stand up with no hands. Reach over to the far left hand side for a hand hold. Reach it with both hands. Do a dynamic foot swap with the left foot, needing to land the left foot on another hold far away as the right foot settles. This stops a barn door.) This approach had issues for me; I couldn't reach the hand hold. If I cheated and went to the hand hold via other methods, the foot swap felt suicidal (I was barely on the hand hold with my finger tips, so the approach felt more viable for taller climbers.)

My little brother couldn't do the foot swap either; he had seen someone else do it this way; who apparently fell off many, many times whilst working it.

I discovered if I went for a high right foot on a volume the left hand reach became easy. Then I discovered I could (just) move my right foot onto a hold above the left foot, eliminating the need for the foot swap. Then the climb from there was easy.

Problem solving is one of the thing I like about bouldering; I reckon my approach must be close to the route setter's intended method.

27 December
Climbing. Decent, I got lots of v4s. My favourite was basically monkey bars; probably very soft for the grade, but fun.

29 December
Caving. Digging our discovery cave.

30 December
Hi ho, moar digging. Nearly got hypothermia , we surveyed the cave which required spending a long time under a waterfall. But all was fine in the end.

31 December
Digging.

1 January
Caving, actually did a spot of sport caving for a change. Joe and I decided to do a a shortcut coming back from the columns in OFD. It was a very muddy V2 boulder problem which would be death or severe injury if you slipped. Good fun.

4 January
I went climbing for 2.5 hours. I got obsessed with a jump. After 50 minutes, I finally got it.

It was actually not that hard (maybe V3) but I am terrible at dynos. After 10 minutes, I realised it was feasible: I was getting both hands on the hold I was jumping to fairly reliably. But I was barn dooring off.

I eventually realised I could stop the barn door by landing my left foot on a volume simultaneously as getting the hand hold.

After this adjustment, I still wasn't quite holding it. Eventually I realised my hips were too far from the wall at the catch. So I concentrated on fixing that, and to my surprise, it worked.

6 January
Climbing, 2 hours. Decent session, I got an overhanging V4 which was my anti-style.

Climbing, only 1.5 hours as I got to the gym late. Fun.

There was a new set up, which is not yet graded. I spent most of my time on that. I sent one pretty hard route. I also got quite far one which was a toe hook followed by a small dyno to start, but fell off mud way up.

I went scuba diving over the weekend.

On Saturday we got one dive in. We just did a harbour wreck. It was nice; maybe 2m visibility. 30 minutes dive; water a slightly bracing 8C. The air temperature was lower; I think around 5c most of the day.

On Sunday, we got 10 folk on the rhib, with dive kit for 7. That meant we never got on a plane, so fuel efficiency was poor. We went a few miles out of the harbour. Visibility was so bad we canned the dive. The lack of planing meant we were low on fuel coming into the harbour. Do we needed to switch to the reserve tank, and didn't go diving. We were all very cold, so it felt like the right decision.

I went climbing on Monday. Gravity was high; I plopped 3 dried Carolina Reapers into my lunch beforehand, which may have been a blunder.

I went climbing on Wednesday. It was good; I sent some reasonably difficult routes. 3.25 hour session.

Friday
Climbing. Pretty good, I got a v5 which was horrifyingly scary.

Saturday
I was at a loose end, so I did an 18 mile walk with around 1,000 metres of ascents.

Monday
Climbing. Absolutely cracking session; the highlight was a powerful v4 overhang. It took me about 30 goes to get it done.

I have done loads of exercise recently, much of it unlogged until now.

Tuesday
Lifting: squat; bench; OHP, hangboarding and deadlift.

Thursday
Climbing. Good; I repeated a v5 and got a many week project, ( a tiny dyno which raised your left foot by about 6 inches, but goes to a balance position with no hand holds.)

Friday
10 mile walk, mainly in cold drizzle.

Saturday
Climbing. Great session. I was at Croywall for the first time this year. I got 5 v4s. My favourite was a silly dual texture comp wall thing.

Sunday
Diving. I have a cavern diving course coming up, so I fancied some sidemount practice. My buoyancy was good. Two 45 minutes dives to 20 metres in 6 Celsius water; air temperature 4 Celsius. I was a tad nippy by the end.

Monday
Climbing. Decent session; we did an exercise for about 90 minutes (4 minutes flat out AMRAP, 4 minutes rest). I was toast at the end of it.

Tuesday
Climbing.
I stared well, but faded. I got around 7 miles' walk in getting to the gym.

I felt destroyed on Wednesday. Maybe 7 days to flat out with no recovery was a mistake

Friday
Climbing. Decent, I repeated a couple F6b+ routes, and got a new one.

Saturday
I was supposed to go caving, for a spot of light digging. But only three of were going; two decided to get flu instead. So I went climbing. It was fun, I actually got an easy coordination dyno.

Sunday
Short walk, 8 miles, with stunning countryside and weather .

Monday
Climbing. Smashed it, I got loads of v4s, including some flashes. I made decent progress on a very scary slab v6.