I was feeling old this week. I pulled a back muscle at the climbing gym trying to make a sideways reach that was just a little too far for comfort. I went ahead and climbed for two days after the injury hoping it would work itself out, and of course it got worse. Now my ribcage hurts when I breath deep and the pain is excruciating when I sneeze or cough. I'll take it easy this weekend and be back on Monday.
At 41 years old, I've got back into climbing after ten years. I don't have any kind of expectations of greatness, or even mediocrity. I am only trying to stave off the oncoming glacier of old age. We all know it's coming, but if we're healthy, active and lucky we might hold back that glacier a little bit longer.
This video is pure inspiration... Bill Ramsey, who is a philosophy professor at the University of LasVegas, did a 5.14b climb a week before his 52nd birthday. To give you some idea of the incredible difficulty of this climb, the original Yosemite grading system stopped at 5.10 as the most difficult climbs. But then as the years passed it added 5.11, 5.12, etc. as climbers continued to mount more and more technically difficult climbs. I think the current record is set at about 5.15...
My current best is still at a mere 5.10.
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