The Engineered Boulderer

I was out climbing Wednesday after work. Warmed up and felt good. One of my friends had put up two problems called Noia and Halv-noia. Both interesting problems I had to try. I started with Halv-noia and sent it second try, after figuring out I had to go inside the post instead of outside. It’s big jugs and quite easy, although longish if you can’t get your feet high enough, moves. I knew I could get it while climbing it, and I wasn’t scared of falling or anything, but when I had mantled out my heart was racing, very weird feeling. Standing up there I also felt what felt like a strain in my right calf. I hadn’t felt anything climbing up, so that was even weirder.

Then I moved on to Noia. It follows the edge of our bombay. A bombay is a half arch. Ours starts at 15 degrees, moves to 45 and then to 70. After the roof it has a mantle that goes to 45 degrees overhanging, vertical, a 45 degree slab, and finally the flat top (I guess this is one of those cases where a picture is worth a thousand words, I’ll try to remember to take one next time I’m at the wall).

Noia follows the edges starting at the bottom and as it reaches the side of the 70 degree section it goes up the vertical side of the bombay. You’re hanging horizontally on the side and move up to a good hold. Using the good hold and a slopey crimp/pinch you try to position your feet for a move to the edge. On my fifth or sixth attempt I wanted to try something completely different, turning my right knee in to get over on top of that foot. Unfortunately it just resulted in my right hand slipping (on the bad hold) and me taking an out-of-control fall where I fortunately missed the post supporting the bombay. Unfortunately I didn’t miss the edge of the hole in the matresses around the post. I twisted my ankle and got a mild sprain. I hurried out and got some ice on it, but it was still very sore when I went home. I ended up sitting in our couch with my foot up and ice on almost all evening.

Now, two days later, my foot is still sore, but not really in a rest position. My lower leg feels tired which I guess is to be expected. I’ll keep bandaging my foot for the rest of the weekend, but hopefully I can go for longer walks next week. I can feel I am already starting to get a little restless sitting still this much, I think if I ever broke my leg I’d have to get hold of a wheelchair which I could use for taking long “runs”. I’d go insane sitting still.

This entry was posted on Friday, May 26th, 2006 at 4:43 pm and is filed under Climbing, Hobbies, Life, Me. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.