Rendevous 3 Day 2.

I had a brilliant day. My flatmate had to peel my energy of the ceiling and dilate it with cheap chinese food.

It was brilliant for many reasons. I found knowing that I had all day took the pressure of feeling like i had to be in the zone straightaway so I was more relaxed and happy. We had started with a 25 min run around the canal near the Westminster Sports Centre which was all good. Then came warm up/conditionning...i was more than warm and pretty dam tired so in honesty I didn't do all of the exercises and had no intention of. Is this terrible?...i figured ripped muscle fibres are going to gain worse tears rather than strength after the day before but maybe my knowledge is inaccurate?. Judging by subsequent 3 days of fatigue and plethora of pains I'm not even the slightest bit bothered that i committed the Parkour crime of not conditionning to death (!)as i gave it my all for the rest of the day.

We then split into groups to do 4 stations, 3 indoors and 1 outdoors. Its all quite a blur because this part of the day lasted over 4 hours which is a lot of movement. From the off, jumps were a little bigger, higher or further than i was comfortable with and normally i would stress about them anyone adjusting them 'for a girl' but it kept me moving and everyone was very encouraging. I'd picked a group with as few PK Gen regulars as possible like yesterday to avoid feeling any sense of expectation or an urge to make comparisons. I really enjoyed watching everyone in my group, some of them had some real flair and dynamism and i felt the irrespressibility of their energy provide a stream to carry me along.

One of the stations was a scaffolding cube with lots of junctions and variations of bars providing opportunites for precision jumps, laches, and underbars. Its density and height meant that there was a lot of suspension, rotation and swing within the small space so it was a beautiful station to watch as it was so alive with movement. It quickly became my favourite station and could I do much more than I did on the scaffolding in Evry. I wish i could go back and have another go!. Yann was on this station and i really appreciated his lead by example approach...when he talks about playing, being open and not analysing and planning to much he really lives and breathes it. Quite often he kind of slide down something the wrong way round ending up in a heap on the floor when something didn't go 'as expected'. I loved watching someone who wasn't inhibited about looking skillfull or in control but who could also share breathtakingly fluid and dynamic routes and constantly radiated energy.

By the time I got to the 3rd station i felt like i had built up such an inertia that , even when if I had slowed down or even stopped before an obstacle if i was unsure of my ability, rather than it being a dead stop where its easier to bail the inertia meant part of me was already projected over and it was now an easier option to move through the fear than to be stopped by it.

The lastt station was rail balancing which is usually my favourite. This time it seemed i balanced with nothing but willpower as the normal tiny twitches that keep you balanced had turned to the shakes and lurches of soggy tired muscles. Then came the bestest bestest bit of the day. In our last 5 mins the whole group was asked to simultaneously jump down from a rail balance and do a wall run arriving together on top of the wall within 10 seconds. Logic would say that being very fatigued combined with an 8ft+ wall, which at the best of times provoked a scrabblefest, would equal definately needing a bunk up. During, the first 7 or 8 attempts the guys clocked that i was preventing the whole group being up by 10 and started to hold back to put their hand under my foot and then get themselves on top after. At this point i started to realise i would have to be done and up by 5 for them to be up by 10. I ran at that wall with such a single minded imperitive to run up it that i bobbed up without any assistance apart from the feeling i had been wafted there by angels. I have rarely had such focused moments in my training when im not just attentive and in the zone but im totally consumed by a desire to achieve a massive action in moments...i doubt i can actively recreate it but i will look forward to finding my way back to that feeling.

We finished with questions to Majestic Force and Pk Generations, unfortunately dominated by many questions about historical pk conflict and 'shoulds' of training and only a few about the future and the 'coulds'. I managed to get them to squeeze in one finally question (no Dave i did not do a hand waving dance! i just happened to be quite animated:.)).The question was; were Chau and Hann as crazy as they are now when they were teenagers or is it because they are high on 20 years of PK adrenaline ? if so if i do Pk for 20 years will i be as crazy as them?. As usual they didn't really answer the question (!) but they spoke of open minds and open hearts and i got the vibe. I left with the feeling that the idea of 'true' Parkour spirit was actually something quite different to what i had once thought. I used to identify it as a mentality of strong mind and other catchphrases about working hard and being disciplined which, although this is part of it, misses out what i strongly feel is the priority.A strong corporeal spirit, a bounce, a irrepressibility, a feeling of being larger than life, of being psyched up; uninhibited and unapologetically a physical being.