Non-Geriatric Parkour

There's a Sunday outdoor parkour class that's resumed right across the street at the school. Today was the second time that I went - it was so fun, and absolutely terrifying! We started with burpees as a warmup (you can never get away from the damn things!) and then they broke us up into groups - short people and tall people. Shockingly, I was in the short group. There were three of us - a woman who's done parkour for 5 years, a kid with green hair, and me. 

We started with "climbing" which I thought I would be good at because - climbing. But, then he had us start with step vaults over a hand railing (waist high - maybe 2 1/2 feet high?). I was pretty scared, but the other two did it, so I figured I could too. And I tried, and did! Then we did step vaults that we switched into a side vault at the end, and landed with precision. Which was harder. Then, we went to the ramp going down to a lower level of the park, and he was like - now do it here. And, it was a higher, round rail with a big drop on the other side. Like ten feet at the start! I hustled myself down to the bottom of the ramp, where it was "just" a three or four foot fall, and looked at it. I mean, it was terrifying! Because, you are balancing on opposite hand and foot, on a round rail - and two points of contact isn't that stable! But the other two people in the group were doing it. So, I tried it, and I actually did it! Like five times! One time I didn't lean forward enough, and fell backwards. But, I was holding onto the rail and just wound up hanging by my arms with my butt against the slates, feeling like a bit of an idiot. And, I didn't kill myself. Work in progress.

Then we did jumping. I jumped on this log that I enjoy jumping on. The instructor encouraged me to jump from one curb to another - about 3 feet apart, which was also terrifying. I couldn't get over the mental part of it, but I could jump from right before it, to it. Another work in progress - it's right across the street, I can work on it.

For the last 20 minutes we balanced on the handrail. I'd looked at the rail before and thought about trying to balance or walk on it, but had never gotten up the guts to try it. So, this was immersion therapy. We did four five minute chunks of balance. The first time I mostly just stood there thinking that it was OK. The second time I walked forward a little. The third time I went on a flat part (the other two times I was on a ramp) and walked forward and backward - which actually wasn't that hard. And the last time we were meant to stand still in the same place, which I did, sometimes sticking out a leg and balancing on just one or the other.  All and all, a scary but fun class :)