It's not easy keeping a solar-powered watch fully charged during a British Winter. Come to think of it, it's not exactly simple in the 'Summer' here either.


Anyway, when at home my watch sits on the handle of my window, hoping to soak up any stray sunray that might be floating around on an island like this, and when I opened my window this morning, I carefully balanced the watch on top of the handle, taking extra care to make sure it wouldn't fall. It didn't. Not for a while anyway.

It was about two hours or so later that I heard my window blowing wider and a quiet clunk, followed by a few seconds of silence and finally another clunk further away.

Ah. My watch had gone for a walk.

Now I live on the first floor of a tall house and on the ground floor lives a grumpy old man who enjoys nothing better than to drink himself in to oblivion and come home in the early hours of the morning to blast Magic radio out to the street. That man, despite having a good (but untimely) taste in music would not hesitate to steal my watch, believe me.

So I did what seemed the right thing to do. I went downstairs, knocked on his door and planned to ask him for the watch from his back garden. If he refused then I'd think of something. But the old man wasn't home, of course he wasn't.. he was in the pub deciding whether to set his radio to Magic or Heart later that evening.

So there was only one thing left to do.

There's no access to the gardens from the front of these houses. There are no alleyways to get down the side and there's a big factory behind the houses that doesn't allow easy access from the rear so my only option was to climb out of my bedroom window and descend in to the garden below.

Now with the snow and ice outside thick enough to completely conceal my watch somewhere below, the first task I was faced with wasn't an easy one. The only way down was to jump from the icy window ledge, to my left, on to a shed... thing. Standing nine foot or so high, two feet below me and five foot away, it was a menacing sight and with all of the ice covering both surfaces, I did NOT want to jump on to it.

But I had to. I had to get my watch before the grumpy man came home and claimed it.

Sigh.

COME ON! Jump. This is what you've been doing for the past six years.. jumping from stuff, to stuff.

I jumped and landed, slipped a bit but stayed on the roof, and had done what I knew was actually one of the easier bits of this mission. I still had to get back up there.

Hanging from the shed, I dropped to a lower wall and then on to the ground. Reaching in to the watch shaped snow hole, I grabbed the watch and didn't even check to see if it was still working. Of course it was. When the bombs fall, all that will be left standing are the cockroaches.. G-Shock watches and... Yann Hnautra.

Right, so I need to get back in that window.

I climbed back up on to the shed which now I was aware was covered with three inches of snow. Turning around and looking at the jump back to the window ledge, I was suddenly aware of what was below the window ledge. Two large sliding glass doors.

Glass. Doors.

Nice.

Knowing damn well that jumping from the shed and grabbing my window ledge would probably result in two Nike Darts ploughing through a plate of glass.. I was going to have to find another way. My only other option was to jump from a lower position, the lower wall I had used to climb down from earlier.

It was quite a jump to grab the window ledge and the take off was loose, icy brick. Add to that the fact I had to grab a snow-covered window ledge and somehow avoid the two glass doors.. things couldn't get much worse. Until the light came on behind the glass.

Ok, don't panic. I've seen enough movies and been on enough night missions to know that anyone inside a bright room looking out at darkness can see nada.

But he was home!

I had to get my ass out of his garden and the only way was to forget about how slippy the take off was, how icy the window ledge was, how far the jump was and how likely I was to smash his doors and shower his drunken self with shards of glass.

Taking a deep breath and counting down from five, I looked up and jumped.

It was further than I thought. I grabbed with only my left arm and turned my legs sideways, keeping them together and trying to slow them down as I aimed for the wooden panel between the glass doors. The contact was surprisingly light and I wasn't actually expecting my hand to hold the ledge, but it did.

Scrambling up on to the ledge I climbed back in my window, heart racing, and with a massive smile on my face I looked at the time on my watch and as expected, it hadn't missed a beat.

Two minutes later, Dancing in the Dark by Bruce Springsteen filled the air and I knew he was none the wiser.

-Blane

Labels: Challenges, Experiences

It's 2010 now. A whole year ahead of us to fill great parkour experiences and training progression so I thought I'd share one of my many training commitments for the new year. I wouldn't consider these to be resolutions because resolutions tend to be very general and don't state step by step how to achieve the changes we want, where as these commitments are specific and will be easier to achieve.

"Work out what my greatest weakness is and focus on improving it"

All too often I become comfortable with a movement or standard of strength, for example cat pass precisions, and neglect it to focus on something new and exciting to only realise that suddenly what I considered to be a decent level to be falling behind in comparison to my other attributes. Of course it's more important to have a solid foundation and skill set rather than being amazing at something specific and only be able to do that one thing well. This can depend on the person and be highly subjective but this is my approach to my training.

To actually make changes I've written down what areas I feel I'm weakest in, physically and technically speaking, and decided to dedicate more time to improving these and the best approach in doing so. I also decided that every three months to reassess my weakness.

There is a second side to this and I could write a seperate blog about this but keeping it brief and cut it down to one sentence:

Sometimes the things you hate doing the most are the things you need to work on.

I noticed when I first started training my fear of heights was tremendous and being on a 2 foot raised wall would conjure the most frightening images of injuring myself however irrational they were. Looking back I realised because I was so scared of heights I never practised training at heights. Thankfully my good friends, especially Alli, eased me out of my comfort zone on many occasion and I noticed because I was so uncomfortable I didn't have the same skill level at ground level as I did at height.

So train outside of your comfort zone more often. It could be something as simple as being able to speed vault on both your left and right with the same proficiency.

So my suggestion to you is to have one new training commitment and stick with it for as long as possible. Trying as best to your ability to keep doing it for the whole year, provided it's productive and will progress your training in a manner you wish, the process is sometimes more important than the goal itself. It's okay to fall off the path you wish to walk provided you can get back on track and walk the path once more.

James

Labels: Experiences, Training