As strong as you might...

Four weeks ago I was lying in my bed sweating for the pain with a balloon-sized left ankle. I didn't know if some bone, ligament, tendon or muscle were broken. The only thing I knew was that something was really wrong and that my summer projects were unrelentingly drawning down the potty.

Nowadays modern medical science, my physiotherapist girlfriend and another physiotherapist/neighbour/good friend (not counting my inner knowledge and consciousness of the internal processes of my whole body... HA!) gave me a rough idea of what really happened.

On the physical side two ligaments broken and another badly strained one, a slight sprain of my big toe flexor tendon, two microfractures (part of the astragalus and tibia's distal epiphysis) and consistent muscle tear. Fortunately everything, except the muscle tear, seems repaired by now. Ankle is still swollen but I can slowly walk without crutches and I can focus on cautiously training my calf muscles, so weak after almost one month of forced inactivity.

On the [more important] mental side, I kinda surprised myself. I unexpectedly limited my nervous tension without much problems (with exceptions of course, I'm still myself!) and more important I somehow kept my motivation alive and well. Even better: I made up my mind at the point that I now consider this injury as a great chance to fill my power gaps, with a kind of training I would have never ever done if unharmed!

My plan of travelling the Alps in search of fresh granite spots turned immediately into a savage fingerboard/bar training. After three weeks from the accident the pain mostly left my ankle and I felt my fingers, arms, shoulders and abs completely restored and ready to go. Two deadhang sessions to discover that I'm as strong as before. No strenght losses! On tuesday my new Moon fingerboard arrived and after two days of training on it I'm already in love... Light and essential, but challenging if used for single arm deadhangs. Oh and yes, Moonboard holds arrived too... Next weeks my woody will be expanded and set for my comeback with climbing shoes on!

Plan is to keep on fingerboarding and weight lifting until I can safely start with some campus moves. Then I'll start again bouldering on my new board. Then it will be time to crush some hard lowball Swiss problems, in late september I assume. Finally I'll raise my game in october, driving towards Fontainebleau.

Oh yes, that's the plan!

Good news and bad news

As it's two months now since my last post I think I owe my few readers some updates, as many things happened, good and bad ones. I'll try to be brief.

Phase 2 started and lasted, as expected, about 3 weeks, consisting in hard fingerboard+campus sessions and some outdoors bouldering, culminating with the comp at the gym here in St.Pierre (AO). I ended third behind Paolo Leoncini and Ale Catalano, just for a bad reading issue in the final problem. Oh well...

After an active rest week I felt in prime shape and proceeded with my first visit in Brione, on May 2nd. Quick send of classic Atlantis 7C and fuckin' close to Molonk 7C. The area is awesome, granite quality second to none, so clearly I long for a fall comeback, as a fair number of outstanding problems await me. By the way, the day before I cleaned and climbed a new problem in the Piedicavallo area (well not a real area, actually a single big boulder), named "Stratos" after the great Demetrio.

Having declared Ticino's areas too hot to climb hard and waiting for complete snow meltdown in Averstal, I thought it would have been a nice chance to develop something new in the Aosta Valley, a region outrageously rich in rock but poor in boulderers and consequently in boulder areas. After a couple of meetings with young promising locals Stefano and Matthias, I was brought to this "new" area in Valpelline, like 10 minutes drive from my place...

Beautiful wood, quality rock and a few problems already estabilished, plus a whole lotta projects. In three visits I repeated the existing and opened a couple of new ones in the 7B range. Last time (May 20th) I almost topped out a terrific compression prow featuring a very nasty right hand crimp on the crux, but being alone I was afraid of missing the hold on the last jump, fairly off the deck... So I jumped down post crux, sure to come back soon with a spotter. Oh how wrong I was!

The next day I went back to Biella and arranged a late afternoon session with some friends in Donato. After warming up I set a new linkup at around 7B, with a nice power move. Feeling good and having good time with friends I decided to have a go on "Le invasioni barbariche", vertical and crimpy 7A/+ I opened more than a year ago, problem I use to repeat every time I come here as it's truly worth the effort. But this time the unexpected happened: on the crux move (a right hand lockoff trusting on a poor left foot smear) I random put my left foot on the wall, in a slightly different position than usual. While my left hand was flowing to the last positive crimp my left foot popped and in a blink of an eye I was hitting the ground. My right foot hit the pad, but my body position clearly wasn't balanced and I rolled on my left ankle. I immediately knew that prolly no bone was broken but at the same time big damage occurred, and no fun was in sight for me in the next weeks. I couldn't charge my foot anyhow, so helped from my friends (thanks A LOT Marco, Dani and Silvio, who even carried me on his shoulders on the steepest part of the track!) I slowly crawled towards the car for about half-an-hour, since we were quite distant.

Now almost 3 weeks passed by and the situation is: serious ankle sprain, in which almost surely 2 ligaments have broken and another one is damaged; as the results of today's RM will come next week nothing is still definitive. Anyway healing is going well, pain has gone and I'm finally able to start again on the fingerboard. I'll try to look at this injury in the best possible way: I have the chance to build up a lot of strenght, focusing on my weak points. I hope to be able to climb again in september, but who knows??

These were briefly the april/may news. A more introspective post will follow soon, as I had a lot of time to reflect about climbing and other few things.

Til the next, syked nevertheless!!