First of all, happy 2012!

I hope that everybody will have an injury-free year and enjoys climbing like never before.

What about my upcoming year. Well let me start by explaining the year that is just passed. It wasn't that much of a climbing year actually.

I am just going to brief you shortly on it. It's still a climbing blog isn't it...

1.       Did an internship as last part of my studies and graduated successfully. (January to June)

2.       Went on vacation with my girlfriend and did some chilly willy climbing. (July)

3.       Some partying and finding a job (August)

4.       Started working as a web developer in Deinze (September)

5.       Finding a house to move to with my girlfriend (October)

6.       Moving to the new house in Gent  and some last minute training for the competitions (November)

7.       Unpack some more boxes and climbing the competitions.

In between that I went 8 times to Fontainebleau. That's already one good intension for 2012, raise the number of trips to Fontainebleau.

A second good intension is to enjoy climbing in the pure form again. I did some weekends in Fontainebleau where I just wanted to climb that one route and then come back home again and did nothing. Is that the reason why we travel 800km's? To be frustrated about yet another "bad" weekend in the forest. Then the weekend after that you get back in your car for that one boulder.
Those times are over for the moment. When I want to go to the forest the upcoming year I want to climb multiple nice lines hidden somewhere deep in the forest. That's what it's all about.

So I started training (good intension number three). Train hard to be a climber that has a wide range of boulders he can handle. And as you train your level will automatically increase again. And maybe at the end of the year and begin next year I will try to catch some big fish.

And that brings me to the last good intension, only climb for myself. As the year passed I realized that climbing on a high level is very time-consuming and the reward you get is small in comparison to that. The focus must be fun. Why should we climb for grades? And even worse, discuss longer about it then we climb? Grades are just a mark for yourself. If you normally climb a 7A and just that one day you can't, then you should train harder or just sleep a bit instead of starting the whole grade discussion.

I hope in the upcoming year I can share my experiences and ideas about climbing with all the readers of this blog and maybe discuss about it in the section bellow. It's time to bring some ethics back to the climbing sport. Respect the boulders and each other! And of course I hope we have tons of fun this year because it could be the last year we live (unless we find the missing part of the Mayan calendar ;) ).

More to come!