Very Cold Parkour

This morning it was 4 degrees out (brrr) but it's Saturday, so of course I went to parkour, and it was really fun. I wore my ninja hoodie with the hood fully zipped, another patagonia base layer, a tshirt, a sweatshirt and my jacket, fleece lined pants and my Athleta pants, wool socks, my La Sportiva shoes, a fleece neck warmer, a hat, and gloves with hand warmers. I wasn't that cold when I got there, and then we started running around, for 20 minutes - I was so hot! I had to unzip and keep taking my gloves off. After, we practiced balance on different things and at different levels, which I was pretty happy about because I am still building up confidence after The Big Fall. I did some good balances on slightly higher things, and walked on a little higher bar. After we took a photo to prove we were there. I really like this second picture because it looks like the wind blew us into the net!

Yesterday we did a practice at the school across the street from my place. We started with stairs, did some fun vaults and jumped around on the stumps (I did two foot jumps to every other stump) and then made up some silly game on the playground. Then we did 106 squats on the stairs (ouch). I'm still nervous walking on the rail - I have to practice a little more to get my comfort back with it.

In between, I did a puzzle, read a book and hung out with my cats. Every puzzle I do seems to be missing one piece. I'm suspicious it's the cat's fault.

Early 2022 Parkour Fun

2022 started with the back thing, but fortunately I recovered in less than a week. Not ancient yet! The secret was walking and yoga. And these pot gummies that are completely legal. Last weekend I decided that it was time to get back to exercising again, and I'm so glad that I did! It snowed out on Friday, and so Saturday class was a snowy workout. Our usual teacher wasn't there, so we did everything a little differently. We didn't get to meditate and the warm up was a little different, but it was good. We mostly practiced getting used to moving on the snow again. After class, a big snowball fight broke out, of course! The snow was packable, but you had to really hold it in place for a minute or so to get a good snowball, which is a long time to be vulnerable without snow to throw. One of our coaches, has the strongest arm and could stand out of our reach and hit us with snowballs. It was pretty impressive.

Sunday I was going to go to the earlier class at 9:30, instead of the 11 am one, since the earlier class is easier. But, I wanted to sleep a little later and have pancakes for breakfast. So, I toughed it out in the later class, but with pancakes in my stomach. On the minus side, there was a dead rat at the highschool where we trained, and we had to keep running past it. On the plus side, we again ended with an epic showball fight with snow that was much easier to pack. It started out as everyone for themselves, but then evolved to adult class and coaches vs kids class and coaches. The kids class was on higher ground and had better things to stand behind, so in the end it was a pretty even fight. 

Today (Wednesday), we did our usual running, which was not so fun, but the rest of the class pretty much was. We did some balancing, some route building, I did 83 squats and some pushups. I've been trying to be extra careful about covid, so I told my buddy who I usually go out with after class that I didn't want to eat inside. So, we got takeout from the Pho restaurant and ate it my garden in the freezing weather. It was a really nice picnic!

2022

Happy 2022 to my reader (Kit!) I missed a few activities in the blog, so I thought I would get the new year started with a posting. On Friday, Dec 31 (aka NYE) I went skiing with a friend at pat's peak. It was really foggy and the snow was kind of slushy, but there was at least snow on all parts of the mountain! Even the back was open. I went with my friend Carolyn, who was also faster than me (much like my nephew). It turns out, though, that the best part of skiing with someone else is the fact that you have someone to ride the lift with, not that you actually ski with them. It was so much more fun going up with her, especially because we hadn't seen each other in 6 mos and had a lot to catch up on. We met there a little after 8:30, probably started skiing around 9 and left at about 3:30. But, we did eat lunch, which took about an hour, so I think it was about the same amount of skiing as other days. 

Also last week I took my brother and his partner for a walk in the Fells on my favorite loop, the rock circuit. I told them we would "walk around the reservoir" but I didn't really specify the terrain. Ooops. Fortunately they both came in layers, with water, and wearing hiking shoes. The trail in from the road is actually like a dirt road. So, we started walking up the path, and they said they'd like to go in the direction with the view of Boston, so I turned at the trail. My brother walked right past it, not even realizing that yes, we were going on an actual trail just a few miles from the city. We did the whole loop without crossing the road - it worked out well, they seemed to enjoy it in the end.

Today I was at parkour and I did something to my back. It's silly - I wasn't doing anything hard, just stepped down and felt it pull. I think I may have been overdoing it with the skiing, hiking and parkour... This is the first Sunday that class hasn't been right across the street from me - it's now 2/3 of a mile away at the high school. So, of course it figures that I would hurt myself today and have to be limping home before class ended. I spent the rest of the day on the couch both feeling comfortably lazy and bored.