January 28, 2005


  • I watched a program last night called "Jump London". It probably first aired late last year or just after the New Year. It's about a new extreme sport known in its founding language, French, as "parkour". In English, a translation of "free running" seems to be catching on. The essence of free running is mastering a discovered array of urban obstacles such as fences, barricades, walls, roofs, gaps between buildings, etc., while running/leaping/jumping but never stopping. "Never Backwards" is their motto and gracefulness of movement in performing spectacular urban aerobatics is their ideal. So the idea is to transverse the urban landscape, often by rooftops, with a constant flow of running motion and stopping for nothing - but finding a way, even in the most challenging circumstances - in the act. Someone called it the art of cat burglary without the larceny. Heh. True free runners, however, disdain that comparison and embrace the philosophy of martial arts, if not the taoistically mystical.


    The website urbanfreeflow best describes the sport and its history.


     


    A video of the sport featuring one of its founders, Frenchman David Belle, can be found here.


     


    I haven't seen any free runners live in my parts yet. (Have you?)   I wonder (hrmm...) if I should be the first.


     


    Yeah, I'd probably kill myself.  And, no, it wouldn't go over big for me to be vaulting vaults and scaling mausoleums in Dreamland (Lake View Cemetery) where I typically run.


     


    Still... ­just to be able to call myself a "traceur" (free runner) and lose myself in "the flow".

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