Adrian: Day 44, Parkour!

Woke up feeling sort of sick today, had a bit of a cough and a sore back. Wasn't too excited to get out of bed, but zazen instruction was at 8:45 a.m., so Emiko and I reluctantly rolled out of bed and went through the morning motions. We skipped out on the lecture at 11 so that we could go home and eat lunch before parkour class at 12. We got home about 10:40, so we had a very early lunch. We left the house at 11:10 and made it to the Ashby BART (subway) station at about 11:30. We caught our train at 11:40, got off at the next stop in Downtown Berkeley a couple minutes later, and then made it to the rendevouz point at U.C. Berkeley at about 11:45. It was lucky we got there early, because I had a full bladder all morning from tea, soup and airborne and had been pissing like a horse.

We met up with the rest of the beginner's group at "the Practice Wall", which is about 4 ft. high and 40 ft long. We started out with a very brief stretch, and then the instructor, Jeff aka Meatlad, had us jog a few laps along the perimeter of the lawn. We ran forward, sideways and backwards. When we got back to the wall, we immediately started the warm-ups, which they called "QM" or quadripedal movement. We crawled from the top of the hill (where the wall was) to the bottom on all fours. We did this with several variations (check out the video Nate posted of Jereme's warm-ups to get an idea). I was heaving after the warmup, and I didn't feel like I was in any shape to start jumping. But jump we did, and many, many times at that. We split up into several groups. Our practice leader was Albert aka Lethalbeef. Here's a video sampler of him in action:



I had a difficult time getting some of the jumps right, because I am very uncoordinated. I ended up jamming my knee into a wall right in the beginning. The hardest move for me to get was the 'kong vault', which involves jumping straight at a wall, pulling your knees up between your arms and using your hands to propel you forward and over. I had to break the movement up into two parts - jumping up on the wall and then jumping over. But I finally got it right at the very end. And it felt good! I was so excited that I got it, I had Emiko take a video.



Later we did some stuff on rails. We did a move called the 'cat walk', which I was completely unable to do for more than two steps. Emiko was a natural at it though.



Pictures:
The beginner's parkour group. Emiko and I are standing up for some reason.



Falling on my ass while people are trying to have a conversation.



Emiko going up for a kong vault.



Adrian doing a cat leap. That's Lethalbeef on the right.



Landing a cat leap. I fell into that bush behind me numerous times attempting this move.



The event was a ton of fun, and we plan on doing more training with these guys and girls in the future. I'm gonna end the post here, I have to get to my PCP workout!

See you in 24 hours!

Adrian