Aiming high

One of the things my lifecoaching sessions has taught me is that having goals is really important in your life. I've never really had any, I’ve always been more of a person that goes with the flow and takes the opportunities as they come. I’ve lived day to day and in a way, most things that has happened in my life, has been more by chance.
I had as homework one week to set up goals, short-time and long-time ones, and I found that really hard! I just want to be happy, and my family to be happy; and at the moment we are.

But – now I do have a goal actually! A goal which also is the special purpose for my training (other than just loose weight and get fit):
I’m going to climb Mount Kinabalu!
We have formed a Swedish Team and today we had a meeting to finalize all the plans for our climb. It will take place the last weekend in May. Anna is already fit enough; but Maria and I are training at Bukit Shabandar, as many times a week we can. Claudia will be coming too, and will start training now. She is German, but married to a Swede and she talks fluent swedish – so she will be the honorary member of our Swedish Team.




Mount Kinabalu is one of the highest peaks in South-east Asia with it’s 4095,2 m. The thing about this mountain is that you don’t need any special climbing equipment, neither to be extremly fit to climb it. You do need to have a reasonable level of fitness though, which we are well on our way to achieve.
You do the climb in two parts, the first one normally takes between 3-6 hours, and will take you up to a base camp, where you can hire rooms and get a meal. You are then supposed to get up very early the next day and set off at 3 am, to continue the climb up to the top, aiming to reach the summit just in time to watch the sunrise from there.



This second part takes between 1-3 hours; and then you have to get on with the descent obviously. Descending apparently is the hardest part for your body, and normally takes between 3-5 hours.
(To compare, they do a Climbathon once a year, where the hardcore athletes do the climb – and the record time to get up AND down, is 2 h 34 minutes!)
We are planning to fly up there (to Kota Kinabalu) on the Friday night, do the climb up to Laban Rata (the rest place) on the Saturday, the top and descent early Sunday morning and then rest a bit before we fly back to Brunei Monday morning.
It will be GREAT!