HAPPY NEW YEAR ONE AND ALL.

I admit it’s been a while since my last blog but life has been traumatic to say the least. Unfortunately, Tim and I have suffered some family bereavement, which has meant we’ve been spending a lot of time down on the South Coast. All the travelling and emotional turmoil/stress have taken their toll and when things like this occur, it helps put your own troubles and life into perspective. An early death is tragic and triggers thoughts and feelings that are hard to ignore; consequently, there’s been a bit of soul searching going on.

What hasn’t helped is that my shoulder injury really hasn’t improved at all and my climbing has all but come to a standstill. I have been getting regular physio on it since the end of November but progress seems slow to backward. My sister cleverly bought me an acupuncture session for xmas, which I had the day after Boxing Day down in Bristol. It reawakened a route to take in treating my shoulder. Obviously, it wasn’t going to be cured with one session but it felt like a tiny bit of progress was made and I think I’ll try to find a Chinese Doctor in Sheffield and combine the two treatment methods. Surely something has to work soon!

Yesterday, was a fun day, as both Tim and I went climbing down to The Foundry- first session in The New Year. For me climbing has been sporadic maybe once every couple of weeks and for Tim it’s been way longer, maybe a couple of years! But it was great to go together and have fun and blow away the cobwebs.

The physio (Alison Macfarlane) has advised that I need to aim to go climbing once a week- which I will try to do from here on in, now all our upsets are calming down- as this helps the tendons and ligaments to stay in shape for climbing and stay used to the workload, even if it is at a way lower intensity to normal. Apparently, a very common occurrence when coming back after an injury is to damage tendons and ligaments. This is because we get all keen and enthusiastic, build up the exercise, the muscles get strong much quicker then the tendons etc, we feel great then, BANG!! Something snaps and there you are back in injury-time again.

So although climbing at a low level is a little bit frustrating, I can see that it is beneficial to my future rehab and that helps me to continue with it. But I have to admit that the motivation levels have been getting lower and lower over the last six months and I’ve not really known how to remedy it. I do love climbing and have said it before, it doesn’t matter what the grade is if it’s a great route. But obviously, one of the things I love about climbing is that it gives me the opportunity to push my mind and body hard and going climbing and not being able to do that at some point in the session does take some of the shine off it.

But ironically, because I’ve lost sooo much fitness and muscle tone, climbing at a low level is actually quite challenging now, physically. And although it’s strange (and a bit scary) to be getting properly pumped on f6’s, I suppose there is some fun in it.

Anyway, enough of injury chitchat- even I’m bored of talking about it!

The other news is that I’m fostering a young dog from a Sheffield rescue centre called Rain Rescue (www.rainrescue.org.uk).

The young lad is called ‘Monster’ (Leo on the RainRescue website) and we’ve had him since the end of November. It’s been an entertaining time with a youngster in the house, he was about six months when I got him. Incidentally, I only went up there to have a look round at the dogs (Tim and I had been toying with the idea of getting a second dog) and I ended up coming home with him! He’s a lovely chap and after an initial period of Kodo’s nose being put out of joint, she loves him too. They have amazing play fighting sessions that sound like world war three has started but both come out of it tired yet relatively unscathed. The fact that he’s a staffie cross means they get each other and understand the rules. So, if you were thinking of getting a dog, then he could be your chap. Check his picture out in the Gallery.

Anyway, I’ve rambled on far too long (as usual), so I’ll head off and get packed for my First Aid course at Plas Y Brenin tomorrow!