Old man river's log

Climbing. 2.5hours. It was good; my first ever v5 flash. It was a balance-y slab with not many, tiny holds mikex apart.

I went climbing on Wednesday. Towards the end of the session, I slipped on a slab and banged my right ankle on a volume on the way down. It was reasonably badly twisted.

A friend at gym recently twisted his, and lives nearby so had some crutches I borrowed. I can now walk short distances without crutches without pain, so it's getting better.

Terrible news. Get well soon.

Thanks Rich.

I managed about 2 miles walk today, my random guess is 2 weeks until I can run and jump again. I'm scuba diving next weekend, which could be interesting.

I did something similar in lockdown. I didn't fancy going to A&E in a pandemic, so I bodged crutches out of two brooms. It took 3 days before I could walk without them, and I was functional after about a week.

Hopefully the recovery will be quick again this time.

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