High Hopes

And I don't just mean "I hope I don't fall from this high"

Climbing continues to be a total riot - Tank and I are having a great time exploring new routes at Grand River Rocks as our 2-week trial membership nears its end. I'm becoming a more confident and slightly less hapless climber, basically able to onsight anything up to 5.8 and starting to get the fundamentals of footwork and maneuvering on the wall under me.

Including big steps to tiny chips.

Going 3 times in 5 days - that was Friday of last week, Sunday and then Tuesday - may have been a bit much, though. After a particularly overhung 5.8 that took me a couple of whacks (and just falling the hell off it once) to send, I woke up with some soreness in my right middle and ring fingers that feels like the start of pulley strain. So, I'm giving it a rest so we can hopefully head back for the last day of our trial tomorrow. I'll really miss being able to climb as often as we have, but I do look forward to checking out some other gyms in the near future to see what other vertical adventures we can find.

Though I'm far from bored with what GRR has to offer!

One thing that I haven't been backing off on, though, is my ankle rehab. Day in, day out I'm working to get stronger and more stable. Wobble board exercises, calf raises, 1-leg squats, and lots of balancing on one foot.

Which I can now do for a solid 2 minutes, even while reaching my other leg out to the front, side and back.

As I've gotten stronger, I've upped the reps and difficulty, adding in exercises to address weaknesses as I identify them. This means it now takes me almost half an hour to get through the full routine, but the payoff is that there are fewer and fewer things I'm unable to do. Stairs no longer make me cringe, and I can stand on one foot while putting on a pair of trousers or taking off my socks. My range of motion increases, the pain and twinges wane, and I am tantalizingly close to being able to move from my brisk-paced lunch walks to something like an actual run.

As a matter of fact, just this afternoon I had a bit of a breakthrough. 

I could just barely do two last week.

Since one-foot hops are a major indicator of readiness to return to activity, I'm taking this as a promising sign. As of tomorrow it will be exactly one month since my last run, and my osteopath told me at my last appointment it would likely be at least two weeks before I could start running again.

That appointment was two weeks ago.

So, I'm thinking tomorrow may be the day. I have no idea how it will go, but I'm going to see if I can manage 5 minutes. If that feels ok, I might push it to a kilometer, or a mile at most. I don't want to do any harm, but I do want to know if I can get back out there. While I know it will be some time before I can get out on the trails again, I just want to feel like I'm getting somewhere.

Because you can only spend so much time pedaling to nowhere.

Keep your fingers crossed for me, folks - I need all the luck I can get!