Mike Doyle's Rants&Raves

On July 25th, 12 weeks after breaking my collarbone, I was cleared to start climbing again. Honestly I was pretty surprised. At the six week mark the doctor looked at an x-ray and said that he saw no visible signs of healing but then all of a sudden I was good to go. The scariest part is that the break looked worse to me in the later x-ray than the newer one.

X-Ray 12 weeks after surgery

After 12 weeks of not being able to lift my left arm I was a little hesitant to climb on it. Now, granted, I had climbed a few days post surgery but I tried to take it easy and climb with my elbow below my shoulder. Not the easiest thing to do. For the first six weeks of my recovery I didn’t climb at all but I did try to stay active. At the six week mark when the doctor told me I couldn’t climb for another six weeks I decided to just take a break from pushing myself and have fun. I traveled up to Canada to visit family and friends and tried to focus on work.

Getting the go-ahead to start climbing was both a relief and a bit stressful. I am registered for a World Cup in Atlanta at the end of September. This means I only had three months to try and get into shape. I’m not sure I’ll make it but I started trying. The first two weeks I took it pretty easy, only climbing 1-2 days a week which for me is nothing at all. Then as I started getting more comfortable I started to push it a bit more and start hitting the gym for some training sessions.

Last weekend I actually had a day where I felt like I could push it. To my surprise I redpointed a 13c called ‘Super Dickman’ at ‘The Roost’ area of Mt Charleston. I tried this route a few times last year but always second day on and never really enough to get a good sequence. This year I managed to do it fourth try and I’m happy about that because I felt like I was climbing well last year. To be able to do a route quickly that I didn’t do last year was great. Hopefully I can continue to improve leading up to the World Cup and then use the fitness gained training for that competition to have a nice successful fall!

Here’s a few photos of me working “America’s Most Wanted” at the roost. Thanks Ed!

Starting up 'Americas Most Wanted'

Crux of America's Most Wanted

Posted on September 1st, 2012 by Mike Doyle
Filed under: Uncategorized