3 day Parkour event

Well, I'm currently relaxing after 3 days of Parkour. Although I've spent around 16 hours training in the last 3 days, I still feel that I could quite easily train tomorrow too. Maybe I'll go out for an hour or two in the afternoon. I booked a day off work to 'recover' from the weekend, but I actually feel surprisingly good! I think that's a testament to the physical conditioning that PK brings.

Of the 3 days, today was certainly the most enjoyable of them all. I arrived at UMIST just before 12pm today, to find 3 traceurs from Bury waiting for everyone. Over the next 40 minutes or so, the group gradually increased to around 30. More than we expected! Unfortunately, the numbers were made up largely of 'trickers'. Whilst much of what they do does require some considerable skill, it's just not Parkour. I'd much rather train with dedicated traceurs who are genuinely interested in training & improving. Enter the Sheffield lot!

As expected, the group from Sheffield was in Manchester today. I have trained with them numerous times before, and it's always a good session because we share a common outlook on Parkour. As the day progresseed, we managed to split off from the large group and concentrate on some real training. Manchester and Sheffield are two closely connected cities when it comes to PK, due mainly to the links which have been forged between traceurs in the two locations. Ben has made the analogy that we train in our own cities, and then 'synchronise' when we meet up and share ideas & techniques. This is a good way of looking at it, and it means that we learn from each other and continue to develop in our abilities & training techniques.

Will (one of at least 3 people at todays jam by that name!!) got really bad sunburn behind his ears due to the extreme sunshine. After that he had to resort to wearing a jacket over his head, making him look like a wandering nomad from the Sahara desert! Danny almost got a pretty big kong to cat today. There's only a very small run-up, but he was getting extremely close. Next time I'm pretty sure he'll get it. Ben managed to repeat his excellent dash vault over the wall at the geological gardens again today. After what must have been 30 or so attempts, he finally nailed it. It's something which he's done before, but it's not the easiest thing to do, especially after 4 days of Parkour! It looked very smooth though, and is almost certainly the most efficient way of getting over that wall. That's Parkour.