Back to the beginning

Met up with Pat for a jam on Saturday. Plan was to head to Giralang Primary, but when we got there, a siren was going off and we decided that we didn't want to hang around for security to pin it on us.

After a long drive around looking for new spots, we ended up at Kaleen High; a place that I'd trained at once before, near the beginning of my parkour "career" (nearly exactly 2 years ago actually). Here's the blog post about that day.

The last time I was there, I had tried to cat pass a concrete box, and failed. It became my long term goal to successfully do the vault, and it was in my mind nearly every time I trained cat passes for the year or so following, but I'd never been back to defeat it.
So it was the first thing I did when I got there.
3 times straight away, no worries. This particular obstacle is comfortably easy at my present skill level... feels good to progress.

The chest high wall I "monkeyed" up the first time I'd been there was the second thing on my agenda.
This wall is actually one side of a long thin garden bed, with the opposite wall being about 3-4 feet away at the same height, which set up a nice cat pass to precision.
Just getting up the first wall is pretty easy for me now, but getting to the far wall was a good challenge. It took me about 20 minutes or so to get it 3 times in a row (once is never), and the secret was - more speed!
It seems as though I have a comfortable running speed at which I approach most obstacles. This speed is fast enough to get me up and over most things, but still allows me to make corrections mid run-up.
This cat-to-precision had to be approached faster, and meant that I had to commit to the move well in advance, without the option of a safe bailout.
This was a good thing to practice, and I'm gonna try to add more speed to my run-ups where I can from now on.

Another thing I tried was this HUGE wallrun. It's gotta be 16 feet high, with a smaller wall jutting out at right angles. The tall wall is totally impossible to reach, but the smaller wall is just out of my reach, and makes for a good tictac up to the small wall, then climb up to the big one.

I tried it for 15 minutes or so, but remained a couple of inches shy of grabbing on.
This wall is now my new nemesis. My next benchmark to break.

I also practiced some rolls on the concrete. Still need to work on these ;)

Meanwhile, Paddy had pulled his first ever cat pass, over a log fence, which was awesome.
He then preceded to catpass everything in site, and now wonders why it took him so long to get it! It's like something just clicked, and that was it: mental block gone.


I continued on with my planche training last night. I am getting a bit better, but progression is slow.

All for now.