I've always liked making my runs more interesting by jumping over low walls or spin-kicking trees (only the violent trees who deserve it), but this is a lot more hard-core, and thus, a lot more whoa-worthy. Which led to a question: how on earth does some one like me get into something like this?
There's always two routes into a new sport. One is to find mentors/teachers/participants and ask them to help you gradually train according to your abilities until you safely develop your capacities. The other is to stupidly jump in by yourself. Guess which option I chose?
So I went here:
By myself. In the evening.
What I did could not really be called "free running" because, of course, I did not run too much. It was more like "ninja training," because I slunk around more than anything, pulling myself up walls, climbing along the railings, and jumping around the garbage bins. It really was a tough workout, especially for my upper-body. I tried to be smart about things and not get myself into dangerous positions. One of the most useful and hardest things I tried was actually jumping over a sidewalk to a low, half-foot curb. It required explosive energy and balance, but if I missed it, there wasn't much risk of my dying.
Speaking of risk, I'm not sure the campus police are going to be thrilled with my playing here, so I'm going to wait a few days to make sure that they can't identify me from the security cameras before I go back.
In the meantime, though, freerunning really does seem like a natural extension of what I do on boring runs and it was a huge motivation for me to lose more weight (if I can pull up even one pound less over a wall, it'll be a lot easier).
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