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| Double Kong in progress! |
This week just
gone, I spent the time participating in a Parkour camp based in Morzine, and
run by Parkour Generations. Here is my experience!
Saturday 20th July 2013
I’m going to
Morzine tomorrow! Right now I’m on my way to the Gatwick hotel. Damn, I’m achy!
Had three weeks off all exercise as I got a really bad muscle pull. So a trip
to the women’s beginner class has rendered me an invalid! Would like to swim
and stretch, actually. I did a PKG workout of the day last night and
managed to give myself blisters on both my hands! So now I’m loving the Savlon.
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| Chalet Philibert |
Finally at the
Chalet Philibert! It took a long time travelling here, but now am sitting
clean, freshly clothed and out by the pool! After the flight there was a long
wait time at the meeting point, but I used it to learn some French from Kevin and
Annty! Now I’ve got a few more words under my hat! As I sit here I can see a
hang glider in the nearby sky and hear church bells chiming. The wind is
refreshing, but also a little chilly! So now I’ve moved inside to the little
spa room. The chefs are making us dinner just now. I already took a little
jaunt down to the town, where I bought some bread and pastries using my
basically nonexistent French. With pointing, pretty much. It’s quite a steep
way down. I am not looking forward to running up this! I hope my side holds up.
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| The town |
We spent ages
playing Jenga tonight – think it may end up being a sort of cult Morzine 2013
game! I started that shit, someone called me ‘Jenga Jenny’! Ehhh, definitely
had worse nicknames. Then we had dinner, and then a big briefing where we all
introduced ourselves, got a bit of the lowdown and took a group photo.
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| First day warmup |
Just survived my
first morning run! It was only a little way and mostly downhill, so not too
bad. Afterwards we did some press-ups and squats. I was struggling to the max!
My arms are wobbling now as I write, and that was supposed to be the gentle,
easy start! And guess what, we were bowls in hand about to get breakfast, when
five more surprise press-ups were sprung on us! Learned a bit more French
whilst we were eating. I pretty much plan to leech French from the French
speakers until they get supremely fed up of me!
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| River adventures |
Just been out
for a morning’s training. Some scary, some hard. We were split into four groups
and all rotated around the groups. Each instructor took one group. Kevin did
precisions, Shirley did rail vaults, Chris did rail balance and Andy did scary
river bridge climbing. Andy’s was the scariest! Dodging along wet rocks and
climbing up onto a bridge with the raging river and sharp rocks below! I tried
not to use my knees, but as my arm strength is still severely lacking I had to.
I also needed a boost to get up on the framework. I was scared to just jump and
try to catch as the rocks were so slippery. Some of the stronger people were
doing traverses out along and above the water. I traversed, but my feet were on
the bridge. Right now it is rainy and thundery! I sort of hope it keeps up. I
love this weather.
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| Muscle up |
This afternoon
we went down to a sports ground kind of place and played a game. We had to be
the first person to win seven rounds of Rock, Paper, Scissors. If you lost the
forfeits varied from running to the basketball courts and back, over a fence to
monkey walk, squats and press-ups. Once we had a few games of that we went to
play a game with a rather dubious safety certificate. We stood on either side of
this wooden structure and proceeded to throw rocks back and forth over the
frame. With a squat in between for good
measure! Chris worked out later that he did approximately 300 squats in that
time! I think ours worked out to about 240. Me old legs hurt! Because they were
using different rocks to each other, Shirley and Chris were ducking through
every other throw. It was during this time that I threw my rock astray and it
fell about an inch away from Shirley’s head. So close I yelled out in fright!
Everybody was like
“It’s fine, it’s
fine, don’t worry!”
I think I was
pretty much still hyperventilating when we left there 40 minutes later. At one
point a dog came galloping in amongst all the falling rocks! We had some
confusion and everyone shouted for the game to stop so that the dog didn’t get
hurt! So although for fitness this was a good game, I wasn’t a fan of the near
misses. On the last day the coaches did mention the game and say they planned
to make it safer next year.
At dinnertime we
were introduced to the often nightly riddles that are presented by Andy and
Chris. I won’t give any of these away here. They are more fun to play if they
are introduced fresh!
After dinner we
met again for some night training where the whole group didn’t speak and moved
as silently as possible. I am getting confidence going over obstacles again!
Tuesday 23rd July 2013
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| Strides and precisions |
Extremely achy
today! My whole body aches, my quads the worst. Soooo. At the end of a long day
of training today (but not as long as yesterday!). In the morning we went for
another run. This was a little bit longer than yesterday with some stairs
thrown in for good measure. I struggled at first, but then I got warmed up a
little bit and started to do okay I think. My main problem is that my quads
have been literally dying all day from the rock squats yesterday! We played a
cool little game where we had to get down to the ground in seven seconds, and
then back up in seven seconds. This reduced to six, then five, down and down to
one second! We also played a ‘Cat and Mouse’ game. You had several people lying
in a circle in pairs. One person was the cat and one the mouse. When the mouse
escaped it was by lying next to one person of a pair. Then the other person in
the pair becomes the mouse and has to run.
Then we did some
strides and precision jumps. I got a few pics of me jumping, pretty chuffed. I
think my marker to jump from was a tiny bit too forward, as I did land most of
the jumps. When Chris made me move it back I was like, Noooo, why?! I got a bit
scared but I decided to give the jumps my full commitment so that I didn’t
flake out.
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| Gymnastic rings |
We did some ring
work with gymnastic rings set up in the main church area. The most advanced
were swinging about at height, grabbing the pillar, swinging round and going
for the parallel set of rings. I was literally just swinging from one to the
other and trying to land my second hand. Managed that about twice. The other
part of that session was quadrepedal movement work with Shirley. The first bit was a game where in QM you had
to slap the other person’s hands ten times without getting slapped yourself. The
second bit was crazy hard as it included backwards monkey walk upstairs. Embarrassing
as I basically had to push up with my knees on every step. My legs are
bruise-a-rama! I was paired with Leanne, who was much more capable than me.
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| QM games |
We also did some
climbing up rock faces covered with metal lattice and a normal building wall up
to a balcony. First off I climbed the latticed rocks with Chris and Shirley.
Chris knows that I am absolutely fucking terrified of heights. So was quite
chuffed when despite much trembling I actually got to the top on the first try!
The second one I bailed, but the third one I managed again! Then we swapped
over to Kevin and Andy. As we were all just getting started a man came up and
shouted.
“STOP!”
Then he started
talking in angry French to Annty. Andy got really annoyed as the man was
refusing to talk to him, and then the police were called! So we were forced to
move on.
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| Wall climbing |
Before we went
up, we did a killer session with the small balls where we basically rolled the
balls over various tight spots to try and roll out the muscle fibres. I don’t
think I can even explain how much it hurts!
Well, isn’t this
nice. Actually having a bit of an afternoon break (scheduled of course!). I get
to sit, chill out and write a bit. We had a bit more of a longer morning run
today. It was long enough that it was getting to the stage of starting to find
my flow and enjoy it! But right at that point, we stopped! Boooo. I thought we
would be done then, but ohhh no. The next challenge was to traverse a long
bridge either underneath or up on the railing. I could do neither. So had to
put my feet on the railing and my hands on the bridge floor and traverse that
way. Even so, I found it very difficult and dropped many times. In between
traverses we had to do punishment squats because of the late people this morning.
My problem is that often when these sorts of things are done, the count is so
fast I do about one for every five counted as I can’t keep up! So end up doing
less anyway. Other people I spoke to also said the count was really fast for
them!
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| Hill sprints |
After breakfast
we were split into two groups. We went off to do hill sprints as we chose the
hard option for today. I thought it would be sensible, as we were due to have
the afternoon off today. We weren’t allowed to tell the other group what we had
done all morning, under threat of having to do it again the next day! Between each
sprint we were supposed to do pull-ups or at least negative pull-ups. But my
muscle was playing up, so I asked for an alternative exercise just to be safe. I
didn’t want to reinjure myself so that I can’t even train. The sprints themselves
got higher and higher up the hill until I couldn’t do them in one. I was
feeling pretty shitty about my sprinting ability, but somebody told me at
dinner that they didn’t think I was too bad...chuffed at that!
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| Night training |
In the night
training, the main challenge was getting right across the long wooden bridge
without making a sound. Any sound at all, and we all had to go back to the
start and try again. As we went on the people in front were pointing at
whichever boards on the bridge were making sound, and we had to pass it back
along the line so that everyone knew. I think it took us about eleven attempts
to get right along the bridge, and even then there were a few noises that Andy
let slide. The funniest thing about this is that people were walking past us
completely normally as we went and wondering what on earth we were doing! But
we even had one randomer join in with us! To give him credit he took it
seriously and really tried to stay silent. I took my camera on this night session, but
not sure it was appreciated. It went off by accident at one point and blinded
half the people around me. At one point I laid it down to do an obstacle, and
Kevin picked it up. He seemed rather reluctant to return it! Maybe I was not
being Ninja-like taking touristy pics of everything! As part of the route people were
doing a traverse along wooden beams maybe eight feet off of the ground. I was
going to try it, but was worried I would not have the strength to do it. Later
on at the end of the session, I popped back to the spot with Chris and tried it
while Chris stood ready to catch me! But, no need. I got right along the beam
without dropping once, even including a tricky middle bit where I had to
transfer my hands about awkwardly. It didn’t even feel too physically
difficult, just had a bit of the fear of dropping!
This morning we
did some warm up with a game very similar to “What’s the time, Mr Wolf?”. Then we
started out for our run...but aha! We only ran for a short way to a wall. Here we
were told that as a whole group we had to do a thousand wall runs, plus 200 for
the latecomers yesterday. I have a couple of problems with wall runs. One is
that I always strike with the same foot, my left foot. The second is that I
always strike the wall with my foot twisted. Even so, I tried to alternate legs
and gave it my best shot! I now have massive bruises from my bad habit of
slamming into the wall with both forearms. I did maybe 35-40 of the total amount,
I think.
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| Slide Monkey |
After breakfast
today we got the easy option of working on various movement techniques. Andy
was trying to teach getting out of the mindset of only ‘acquiring moves’ and
leaning towards having the attributes to be open to all new moves. One game I
was partnered with Annty with was ‘Start here, finish here’. You should try to
use the start and end points and get there in one to two movements. I was
trying to give super hard and inventive ones as I know Annty is a bit of a
Parkour superwoman. Luckily she gave milder ones back! Then we headed over to
the rails to play add-a-move. I’m pleased to say I’ve gained back the
confidence to Lazy Vault over this height. But slide monkeys are still beyond
me, unfortunately.
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| The Double Dragon |
After the fun
flips and tricks session, we had to monkey walk backwards up 650 metres of
mountain. I’m not even kidding. This was very hard, very steep and had a lot of
gravel which opened my blisters right up. Paedar was being amazing, counting
out loud 10 steps and then 30 seconds rest. This was really the thing that got
me through it. They call this challenge The Double Dragon. I think there are
supposed to be two distinct sections of massive, torturous hill? But it all
blurred into one. When the hardcores had finished they came back down to carry
bags and bring water. I must have drunk about a third of Annty’s water in one
swift gulp, she told me to slow down on it. About a third of the way up the
hill, I was almost knocked out by a bag thrown from in front! I growled a
little at that one, it almost knocked me out on the spot! The Double Dragon was
finished up with twenty eight press-ups per person. After the challenge I felt
really irrationally angry all through lunch. I tend to get very emotional after
I do a hard physical challenge and still never know whether that means I will
be sobbing (as at the end of Tough Mudder), hyper or raging.
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| Bar work |
In the afternoon
we did the dreaded Morzine Megaroute. I was so dreadful at this. It was so hot
that the tarmac was literally melting and sticking to your shoes. I had zero
energy. I couldn’t run uphill and could barely run down. I climbed up the wall
on one section and then didn’t have the courage to jump across. Then I got told
I was holding everyone up by staying on the wall. Wasn’t by choice! Literally
couldn’t figure out how to get down. I had to be helped down. This route had so
much uphill, with the sun beating down. I managed to slice my hand doing a wall
run. Everyone running past me kept high fiving my still bleeding blisters! I
have to say this is the one exercise that I genuinely found absolutely
miserable. Running downhill at one point, Andy came past and asked if I was
okay. I guess I must have looked like a sweaty mess!
“No!” I grumped
as he passed. I was so slow, I only did the whole route one a half times before
the session ended. Hmmm. Something to aim for next year!
Friday 26th July 2013
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| Trekking up the mountain |
Final day! A
mixture of relieved and sad. At 5.30am we all got up as usual for our run, and were
told that instead of that we would be spending the morning hiking right up to
the top of the mountain. It was about a 10km hike I think, and very steep! It
took about four hours. It was knackering! Every now and then we waited for a
little while to rest and make sure we were all together.
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| Wild horses |
Once we were right at
the top we found a little herd of semi wild horses! They were very skittish,
but did allow some petting. They also had a foal with them. Here at the top of
the mountain we placed something very special. If you are going to the Morzine camp
next year you may find out what. We all got a picture at the top of the
mountain too. We stayed here maybe 20-25 minutes and then all made the descent
down. Most of the people took the ski lifts down, including all the instructors. Some people walked
down, either due to lack of money, fear of heights or just keenness. Everyone
was faster than me, and I was left on my own walking down the mountain. At
first it was alright, but then it got a little miserable as my feet hurt and
the sun was beating down. In hindsight, I think it would have been good for one
of the instructors to walk back down the mountain with those choosing that
route. Halfway down, two other students came back up to fetch me and walk me
back! I felt pretty tired and was definitely slowing them down considerably. I
felt so grateful that they came back. If not I think I would have just sat
down. When we finally got back to the chalet and walked in, everyone was
already there enjoying their lunch. The whole crowd of people clapped. I really
wish I had taken a back entrance...I was embarrassed that I was last and more
than a little miffed at being left up a mountain. Also feeling really ill at
that point. I was so thirsty I drank about ten glasses of water in the same
amount of minutes, which promptly returned back to the world in a not so
pleasant fashion. So er, yeah...not
quite as hardcore as I could be yet.
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| Backwards roll |
In the
afternoon, after a bit of a sleep, we all went back out for a slightly more
relaxed session of rolling and drops. I was keen to get back into it after the
mountain fiasco. But as I did a roll I felt my back go! Dammit! Instantly I
knew I would not be able to carry on as my back was radiating a sharp pain
whenever I leaned slightly to the right. It is still there now. It had better
bloody recover quicker than the other muscle pull. I don’t want to be out for
that long again. But the injury meant I got to see an amazing festival performance
happening in the middle of Morzine, with stilts and scarves and fire!
In the evening
we had a little ‘End of Morzine’ talk after dinner and a final photo. Many of
the people after that went on the night training. I had planned initially to go
to every session, but had to miss that one as I couldn’t move well at all. A
bag of ice was my good friend!
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| Coaches Kevin, Andy, Chris and Shirley |
I loved the
physical challenges of the camp, and it is inspiring to see those with greater
skill and try and leech some ideas and skills from them. As always with the Parkour
Generations team, innovation was in abundant supply, and many things were
sprung last minute which is a great way to do things! Also, let’s face it,
watching people who are good at Parkour is always pretty fricking cool. The
food was great, I thought, and plentiful. The chalet rooms were great as well
and each had a little shower in the room. I do tend to be a little bit of a
grumpster if I’m in company for extended periods of time, so this is the one
aspect of the camp I found difficult. I didn’t have time to ‘reset’ back to
normality. So definitely found the challenges more mentally challenging approaching
the end due to this aspect. I am looking forward to coming back to the camp
next year and will have hopefully improved enough to be better at the challenges!
Flatt7
