Motivation Boost

Today is a good day. Well, it started bad - bit hungover because of the one too many three too many beers last night. But my flatmate was heading down to Dumby for a spot of bouldering and since the weather was stunning, I thought I'd tag along. Brought my shoes to do some very easy climbing.

Like I said in my last post, I've been struggling a bit for motivation recently. The thought of a year out from climbing and various other things have been playing on my mind. Losing all the hard fought fitness and finger strength was a worry. My copy of Dave MacLeod's 9 out of 10 climbers dropped through the door today.

A few things today have really lifted my mood and taken a weight of my mind:

1. Ross Henighen doing Silverback, a Font 7C at Dumby and the first hard problem he's done since his return from 2 years out of climbing.
2. Speaking to Mark McGowan who, after a 15 year lay-off is back in the game and already getting near to doing some hard routes.
3. Top roping a Fr7b route I did last year and finding the crux easier! Also nearly getting Slap Happy, a benchmark 7A boulder problem. This is all after 3 months of not climbing, in fact, not doing very much at all.
4. A quote from Dave's book about reversibility maintenance:

"It turns out much less training stimulus is needed to maintain a given level of fitness than to increase it ... in the region of one session a week"

These events and ideas have really upped my psyche. If I can manage a reasonable fingerboard session once or twice a week for the next year, I should come back to climbing without having lost too much.

Today also gave me a reminder as to why I'm getting the surgery. Quite often it feels like my knee is fine -day to day it doesn't bother me and I was seriously starting to question if I need the surgery or not. If I had onyll torn my PCL, I think I would maybe get by without it, as many people do but it's the pesky wee PLC (posterolater corner) that's causing me the most grief. If I'm outside edging, doing drop knees and eqyptions my knee just gives way. I quite positive about the surgery. If my knee is this good now, a bit of improvement should really make a difference to my sporting life.

Only one more day until the operation!