Just Move

Why is August always such a crazy month? I feel like I'm never organized in August.  No matter what's going on in my life.  Well, it's the end of the month now so things are starting to come together.  Classes start tomorrow and I'm excited to get back into a routine.  An essential part of that routine for me is movement.  I think my body is trying to tell me something after I gave it an unintentional break from exercise for a couple of weeks in early August.  Last night, I was trying to get some work done and I couldn't sit still so I threw on my sweatpants and ran out the door.

I headed down to Garfield Park which is really close to my house but I haven't had time to check it out.  It's great for upper body and balance.  Lots of bars and ropes to play on.  I shared the playground with the little ones who were looking at me like you're too big to play on this.  They were running various courses throughout the playground in a don't-touch-the-lava sort of way and I really wanted to join but I felt like that might be creepy so I did my own courses and challenges.  My favorite was trying to find as many ways as possible to get across the monkey bars.

When I started tiring out, I headed home.  I'm trying to get myself into better running shape, so I ran home stopping only when I saw something I wanted to jump on—bike racks, interesting walls, rails, etc.

Apparently that wasn't enough for my body, because this morning when I was in the middle of an email, I had the sudden urge to move again.  My body was itching to get up and jump around.  I stopped mid-email, threw on my sweatpants, and ran out the door with nothing but myself and my keys which were conveniently looped into my shoelaces (a trick I learned from my Dad).  I ran towards the same park, but noticed there were a lot more people this time so I decided to just go for a parkour run around my neighborhood.

I stopped to do some 180 precisions onto a stone wall and then QM down the wall.  Then I ran towards a staircase that looked long enough to be a challenge.  I like to follow R's philosophy that stairs are not meant to be walked on unless it's for conditioning purposes.  My chosen stair torture for the day was jump up three steps, jump down two.  A young man stopped me, box jumps? he asked.  Just jumping! I answered.

After the stairs, I started heading back up the road, wondering where it would take me.  I found myself back by a metro stop I recognized and looked around me for things to play on while I jogged.  I tried to change up my levels as much as I could, jumping on walls and ledges along the route.  After a few more turns, I found myself in front of some Federal building with one of those walls that changes height because the sidewalk slants as you walk up or down it.  I decided to test my max jumping height.  Why not?

I started with an easy height just to get my jumping shoes on.  Then I slowly inched to the left where the sidewalk got lower and the wall got higher.  This was an easy way of pushing my jumps little by little.  As I jumped, anytime I felt myself coming down onto the ledge with room to spare instead of just barely making it, I knew I could move down another inch or two.  The last jump I did was just over my belly-button and I did it three times to make it stick.  I don't think I've ever really tested my max height before.  I normally just jump until I can't anymore.  I don't like to measure distances, but I felt like measuring something with my body was fine.

I was excited that a security guard hadn't asked me to stop yet, but I didn't want to push my luck so I kept moving.  I started jogging in the direction I felt like jogging in, and eventually found myself back to a main road leading me home.  What a perfect way to start the day.  And I'm not even tired enough.  I still have this strong urge to move.  Maybe it's always there though, and I've just never noticed it before.  I'll have to find a way to balance that with my schoolwork now that classes are starting... I don't think "I'm sorry professor, I just needed to move" is a valid excuse for not completing an assignment.

Pause for the Puzzled Public

Week 20: Community Conversations

I've been training outside a lot more lately which is awesome for many reasons, but it's also allowing me to interact with the "public"/strangers/wandering souls a lot more.  Just from my office to the gym, with a training stop in between, I had four funny little interactions with people about parkour.

The first started at my office (so I guess it wasn't technically a stranger).  My supervisor's husband was there and when we were introduced he gave me an Ooh you're the parkour intern! Ha, yes yes I am.  We started talking about  my training briefly and he wanted to know where I do parkour.  That's the best part, I explained.  Anywhere and everywhere.  Hard to picture, I'm sure, for someone who hasn't seen it before.  And I always try to discourage anyone I talk to from using their YouTube imagination.  Not all of us jump off buildings or climb 90-foot cranes.  I like being in one piece.

Next, E and I were walking towards a park to workout after work and we were waiting at a crosswalk.  A young man leaving work looked at us in our athletic gear in a pool of suits and asked where we worked out.  I could've just said we were on our way to the gym but I like sharing what I do with curious strangers.  They always think it's so "different."  One of these days, I'll say I train parkour and the stranger will say Oh, that's awesome.  I know exactly what you're talking about!  Anyways, I explained to him that we do parkour and therefore where is wherever we can.

We made it to the Carnegie Library at Mt. Vernon Square and started warming up.  As part of our warm up, we were doing lunges up and down one of the walkways.  A suit walked by and our conversation went like this:

Suit: Lunges?
Me: Yeah!
Suit: Here?
Me: Why not?
(The suit shrugged.)
Suit: I agree!

We continued with our warm up, and then moved into some balance on the rails.  At this point, a nice gentleman from Events DC came out to inform E and I that we were on private property.  Uh oh.. I thought.  Preparing myself to get kicked out (after I got over my confusion that it was private property even though the building said "Public Library" on it)  I asked the man if we were allowed to be there.  Surprising us, he said he'd prefer if we stayed closer to the street but we could stay and do what we were doing.  What are you doing anyways? he asked.  I explained parkour and the different skills we were training (balance, jumping, getting over things, etc.) and he was fascinated.  In the end he told us not to hurt ourselves.  And don't sue them.  Sir, I don't plan on hurting myself.  I assured him we'd be safe.  He was satisfied and left us to our workout.  A bit later, we had a similar conversation with another Events DC employee-- Are you girls exercising? The woman asked.  Yup! Okay, well... just don't hurt yourselves! We'll be careful!

It seems that everyone in this city is extremely concerned for our safety.  And then there's the tourists who just clap excitedly when we do something cool.  Actually, it doesn't even have to be cool.  I missed a jump I was trying to make from one leg on the rail to a wall nearby and they started clapping.  I looked at them, confused, and smiled.

It was fun telling so many people about parkour in one day.  I also love when I can have positive interactions with property owners and managers who allow us to play on their buildings instead of shooing us away! I've noticed one of the guys I train with a lot always interacts with passersby when we're outside and I think it's important.  Some people won't want to talk to you but others slow down or even stop completely to stare at you curiously.  We could ignore them and keep training... or we could smile, say hi/how are you, and talk to them about what we're doing.  That doesn't mean we have to chase down everyone who walks by but even just a smile or a hello will encourage those who are genuinely interested to ask us about it.  I think it helps to build a good relationship with the community.

NYC Part 2: Conclusion of the Women's Jam

Week 19: NYC
Sunday morning, we did a group clean-up of the gym, thanked them for their generosity and headed towards Central Park which took about.... five transfers on the Subway.  Oy vey.  When we arrived, we went straight into the mini symposium.  We heard from four different women on various topics relating to parkour. The first (if I'm remembering correctly) was K who gave an empowering and motivating talk on our role as women, and how amazing it is that our group had taken it upon ourselves to get to NYC and to train parkour together.  She took an interesting perspective by reminding us of some of the very recent laws relating to women's rights.  She reminded us that it wasn't too long ago that we, as women, didn't have some very basic freedoms.

Next, we heard from M on various forms of movement and how they can contribute to our training, A on the physics of parkour (especially the parkour roll and how the center of mass on a male vs. female may affect our movement), and last but certainly not least, B read a beautiful and inspirational poem, On Growing Wings.

Unfortunately, a few of us had to take off at the end of the talks to head home, so we said our goodbyes and wished everyone well.  It was relatively painless getting back to my bus stop, and I only hit an hour of traffic on the way home.  Could be worse.

It felt so good to be as sore as I was the next two days, as I haven't had time to get a good ass-kicking workout in a while.  As usual, when I get an overdose (no such thing, really) of parkour, I have this feeling that I just want to stop everything I'm doing in life and train all the time.  It's just such an amazing art/discipline/movement/sport/whatever you want to call it.  I love it.

Sometimes I'm so focused on work and school and responsibilities that I forget to enjoy myself and just get away for the weekend and have some fun.  I almost didn't go this year because I had so much work to do, but I managed to wake up and realize that would be...well, pathetic.  I needed to put work down for a few days, clear my head, and just enjoy life.  And so I did.  I'm glad I made it to NYC this year.  So many beautiful and powerful women of all different ages and backgrounds, come together to train with their fellow traceuses.  It inspires me to keep pushing myself and reaching for new goals.  I hope to train with them all again someday.

But now it's back to the grind... just over a week left at my internship and then I'll have a few weeks to play and train and get organized before school starts back up! Where has the summer gone?!