Tonight I’m going to watch a climbing movie made by Big Up Productions and Sender Films called Reel Rock 7. This is the 7th annual Reel Rock tour already and I can’t wait to see some climbing adventures. Check the trailer.

Want to join me? Come to Monk Bouldergym at 8 PM. They’ll project the movie on the big screen. See you around!

btw: tickets are available at the door

Wow this video shows some nice rocks in Kalymnos, Greece. I haven’t been here yet, but after checking out this video I should make some climbing plans for next year. This destination is on my to do list. Check it out!

Last Friday I was fortunate enough to run a MRI scan on my knee.

Usually you’ll have to wait 2 months in order to get a MRI scan, but in my case it was the next day.

I have spoken to an orthopedic specialist. His diagnose seem to be quite accurate. The outer band of my knee was weak. The meniscus had to be scanned to see if it was still intact.

I got in this huge Siemens scan and it made lots of noise. It took 30 – 45 minutes to run a full scan of my knee. After that I heard quite positive news: meniscus was intact, the rest of the knee was okay too however my knee cap / outer bands was weak after the incident.

For now I will need to recover 2 up to 6 weeks. I can’t climb (or I will have to be very careful ) and had to skip the national championship boulder last weekend and most likely I won’t compete in the lead climb off either come Sunday .

Anyway, next week I’ll have another check up. I’ll catch you around!

Yesterday I had my usual teamtraining at Monk Bouldergym only this time it was shifted to the morning.

Vera, Wouter, Eva and me were having a nice boulder training. I was super motivated and wanted to train 120%. Sunday I went to Stonage in Brussel which was really nice. Tuesday I trained at Monk, Wednesday at Neoliet Eindhoven and Thursday this training. It was my 3rd climbing day in a row.

It all went well until the last few minutes of the boulder training. We started with some warm up boulder problem followed by a few boulder problems between 6a and 7b, short campus session in between and another 2 rounds of boulder problem solving.

I was doing okay until I fell out of a boulder problem. It was a really interesting boulder problem which I’ll probably never repeat again. I had to cross over with my right arm and at the same time leaning on my left heel.

It was so interesting that Wouter shot some photos which I could use for my blog and at that same time I didn’t want to give up. I was basically sitting on my left heal and bent my knee too far away from me that it had to give up on me.

As I was lying on the mat, I tried to move my toes. I could move my left foot, stretch my leg but my knee hurted a lot. I decided to stop the training and immediately made an appointment with our tied doctor.

Throughout the day my knee started to hurt more. I was able to walk in the afternoon but throughout the day I can’t walk proper anymore. I’m still able to bend my knee really careful but I can’t make certain moves anymore at the moment. For instance walking up the stairs is difficult though. According my doctor my left knee is injured: lateral band is partly torn! That’s all I can say for now.

As for now, I’ll need a to run a MRI scan at the hospital as soon as possible (urgent!) to see what exactly is torn, what I’m capable of, what I’m not capable of, how long it will take to recover and when I can start climbing again.

I’m afraid I have to cancel the national championship boulder for come Saturday at Rotterdam I’ll keep you up to date.

Last Friday I woke up at 6.30 AM and went back to sleep for another hour.

At 8 AM I had breakfast on the first floor. In the breakfast room there were a lot of Austrians too. Nikki and Wouter were already having breakfast.

After breakfast we went to pick up Tabitha and drove to the climbing venue. The routes were set outside in the big overhanging gym.

There were a lot of new holds, which made me curious!

The first for me was a yellow route and the second route was a black route. The first part of the route went well and I managed to climb until the roof.

From there I had a pocket with my left hand, clipped a quickdraw and went to another pinch for my right. I changed my foot position and crossed under to another pinch. From here I had to slab to this huge hold with a hole in it. But I didn’t get that far, cause I slabbed next to the hole! I thought the tickmark was going a bit more to the left. It was such a pity, cause I know I could do so much better than this. So far my first route. I had to make up for this in my second route.

At 3 PM was my second route with black holds. It was set on the right side of the climbing gym. This route looked funny. I was relaxing and climbed my way up until I got my right hand on this sloper hold.

It was only the 8th hold I think. I matched it quick and placed my left foot on this huge hold. From there I figured I should go dynamic to a pinch which was quite reachy. It didn’t work out for me. During my movement I suddenly stopped. I don’t know why. I was mad at myself. It went so good until this far move.

I should have locked off my right arm and I know I could have reached it with my left hand but I didn’t. I was copying this Korean guy I saw before and it didn’t work for me.

I ended up last in the ranking. This was a performance to forget very soon! I don’t know what to do. I do feel super motivated to train harder now. The rest of the event was nice. Nikki and Jorg advanced to the semis which was a good performance. Jorg even made the finals and ended up 6th!

Check my Facebook page to see the other 80 photos of the event. After the finals I had some free dinner and played some soccer with Jorg and the Austrian team I do have a note on how to improve the competition next time in Puurs. I think the speaker of the event should either work on his speaker style or turn off the microphone. The rest of the event was super!

Yesss here I’m back again. I just returned from a dinner at Mechelen (BEL) with Nikki, Tabitha, Elko and Wouter. We are sleeping here in a hotel at Mechelen. I ran into Jain Kim (room next to me) and also some Austrians are sleeping in the same hotel. It will be a cozy breakfast tomorrow!

We are here because we’ll compete tomorrow (Friday 21st and Saturday 22nd of September) in a worldcup at Puurs. It is the 4th lead worldcup this year.

Tomorrow I’ll compete and start as climber number 15 in my first route and 35th in my second qualification route.

With a total of 39 competitors it is a whole different field compared to last week in France. There will be a lot of strong climbers, so I hope the routes will be really cool.

According the program the routes will start from 11.00 AM till 17.00 hours. I suppose I’ll climb around noon 12.00 o’clock in my first route!

I’m really psyched!! Come support us at Puurs. Or else you can watch at home via the livestream or at the official Flanders Worldcup Puurs webpage!

I’m heading off to bed. Goodnight from Belgium and see you tomorrow!