I wanna go climbing too! This has been my rallying cry for years now.
Before my kid was born I was a climbing freak. I had a good midweek workout where I combined bouldering, swimming and a brisk trot round to work the legs. By the way, the other day I heard on the radio (quite literally) that “… scientists had discovered that running and jogging are the same thing…”. They didn’t say anything about trotting though. Anyway, moving swiftly on…. At the weekends I gave it my all on the ropes. Any available route, for as long as the light lasted. A devotee.
Then, one day, it occurred to my partner and me that it would be cool to have children, potential mini-climbers, who could climb our routes in the future. But what mini-climbers, what routes, what future…? The fairy tale of The Happy Climber.
If it was already difficult to reconcile professional and personal life, what happens when you add climbing? Or is climbing part of personal life? Well, who cares! What it comes down to, is that not having enough hours in the day to fit in all the obligations and duties, I ended up always sacrificing the same thing.
Not that I regret for a moment making that decision. Nooooooo. I wouldn’t swap my little dude for anything in the world. What happened is that it took me a while to put all of the pieces of the puzzle back together. So, let me share with you mums and dads (dads, please take note) a little advice which allowed me to put the climbing back into my life.