IN WHICH THE AUTHOR NARRATES ABOUT KNEES, FINGERS AND IRON

Another year has passed, my dear reader, and I wonder who you could possibly survive the long wait for the - now - yearly Totolore post. 

My last one left you trembling, picturing Totolore waiting to fix his knee, in order to get back to high(est) level bouldering. 

This post finds Totolore again waiting to fix his knee, the only problem is that I already had the other surgery... and now I need another one. 

In June 2019 I had my surgery, which revealed cartilages that seemed having been chewn by a ferocious dog (a nice surprise, innit) and needed sorting out: for this task I had the pleasure to be the first patient to experiment a new tool, aptly named "vaporizer". 

I lay on the slab, watching on a tv screen as this machine ate my broken cartilages with ease. 

My medial meniscus was broken, but the cut didn't reach the surface. 

I was home that very evening, no pain whatsoever, just 30 fucking days on crutches to let the cartilages heal. 

After some time, with a right leg the size of my right forearm, I started training again. 

And the shit hit the fan. 

I might have sligtly overdone it, in any case my knee started aching, swelling and feeling generally tender and unstable. This went on for months, and then I finally had another MR scan, that revealed that now my medial meniscus was broken for good, with a complete tear, needing another surgery.

There you fucking go. 

So, from april 2017, when I climbed my hardest board problem, I basically quit bouldering. 

My elbow injury kept me busy until october 2018, then my knee, now my knee again. Given my rehab times in the past, I feel that I am facing a three years long climbing hiatus, that, at 48 years of age, surely will do me good. I plan to be - somehow - climbing again this coming autumn. 

In the meanwhile, I've hit the weights and the fingerboard. I completely sacked the board, despite a few problems climbed before my first surgery and getting back to a decent level of fitness, namely being able to climb my two reference problems with 8 kg on and using only one foot at a time. 

With my knee even weaker than before the operation, I had to take a completely new approach. I ditched heavy training and focused on longer efforts and complexes. I started training on the pull up bar with some routines that I borrowed from gymnastics. Nice stuff. 

On the fingerboard, I did some half arsed tests on the Lattice Edge, and mainly focused on flat edges and pockets. 

As of late, I sacked the pockets session because it's too long and I don't have enough time. 

I keep training on my 14 mm edge one armed and on the 9 mm edge with back 3 and front 3 hangs. 

With good skin, I can one arm the 9 mm edge taking 7 kg off for my right arm and 12 for my left. Make of that what you wish. 

A friend of mine has opened a big climbing wall close to here, I've been there a couple of times just for a chat while getting back home from a bike ride (motorbike, obviously), but it's too painful to be there, unable to climb. 

In recent weeks I slightly reduced my training volume and it did me good: my muscles are a bit fuller and I feel generally more powerful. 

I am eating like a pig. 

I don't even have anything to complain about the climbing world, because I completely stopped reading any news whatsoever or following what's going on around here. Whenever I check the local climbing news, the level of bullshit goes beyond my imagination. 

On a side note, I spent the last year attending a second level university master in criminology, that I completed last week magna cum laude.

It's finally good to write an entry after so much time, even if with a boring content. I feel very far away from climbing at the moment, both physically and mentally. Little time to train makes it very difficult to have a proper session, it takes too long to warm up for hard finger training or even system climbing, hopefully this will change as I'll get my knee sorted: maybe the feeling of having a functioning knee again will give me the kick in the ass that I need to put in the hours again. 

I would very much to climb a hard route. Boudering, I fear, is too hard on my knees, or just too hard. 

And with this final note, this thrilling post is over.