At the end of the day, when every price has been paid...

I've had a frustrating but interesting week. The problem is with AS levels looming this summer I have a huge amount of work to do, I'm finishing off self-teaching a further maths M2 module over these holidays on top of all my revision/work and it's taking up huge amounts of my time. So as a consequence, I've ended up spending lots of days just working. I still try to train enough to keep a steady rate of progression though, I need to hold on for now until the end of the summer exams, once I've survived that, it's time for the summer to really begin. So I'll only write about the days I've done anything more than go outside and move around a bit or a bit of conditioning.

Wednesday: Met a couple of traceurs in Keighley for a few hours after my weekly voluntary work with the Bingley Blind Assosciation (which I love but that's for another post to talk about). I'd met one of them (Mac) on msn a while ago but never actually had a chance to meet them. It was interesting, they've been training a fair while but not very hard, I think a lack of motivation and people more experienced to show them the way has held them back. Keighley is a pretty rubbish town to train in, what we call spots here we'd walk straight past in Leeds but we have to make do with what we have. I'd never really trained much in Keighley but they pointed out a few things to me I'd missed which can be used for training. I hope I taught them a bit in the process too, showed them new movements in existing areas. I hope in the long term I can get more involved with them and help them to progress and learn from my experience, they already show a lot of potential. I spotted a pretty big and awkward catpass armjump which I belive is within my reach, however it requires a lot of commitment if it's to be done and the takeoff is off a railing. There's a catpass precision off a pretty high rail onto a wall as well. I tend to go too close to the rail for rail catpasses which means I kill some of my momentum. So I really need to work on catpassing rails in general and then come back to these with a fresh mind and greater confidence. More training options are still more training options, no matter what form they take.


Saturday: Another sunny saturday in Leeds, it was a shame that Hollie and Jamie are both away from Leeds at the moment and couldn't be there but nothing's ever perfect. Anyhow, ended up getting to Leeds about an hour later than I planned because had to get a replacement bus for half of my train journey to Leeds and the driver set off in completely the wrong direction for Leeds before being corrected by a passenger. He then took an incredibly indirect route. Sigh. But anyway, I eventually made it to the Art Gallery. Said my hellos, was pleased to see Scott had the day off work with it being a bank holiday. Kudos to him, still suffering from the afformentioned back injury, he spent the entire day teaching and doing some light training completely barefoot. Didn't even bring any shoes or any clothes other than his trousers with him. At least he'll get tougher feet out of the day.

Anyhow, did my usual warmup at the Art Gallery, had a bit of a run, did some dynamic stretches and then eased into the parkour. My judgement and control continues to improve, along with my confidence. I take movements for granted now that would've required serious preparation not too long ago. I think a few posts ago I talked about a running armjump at the Art Gallery off the second of a line of bollards and how we thought it was probably possible to do it from the third one. Well it took a fair bit of prep work but I got it off the third one. Pretty good feeling. On the down side though, I was twisting my legs to the side a bit which is not a good thing at all. Strange how the body has instincts, usually good but that particular one actually makes you more likely to get hurt. I haven't twisted on an armjump in a very long time now so I'll be drilling that one next time I'm in Leeds to sort it out. I would've prefered to have stayed at the Art Gallery for longer but everyone else seemed to want to move on (*cough* wanted grass to trick on *cough*) so I went with them.

We went to Millenium Square next, I finally got the big passe muraille done, it's probably twice my headheight or there abouts. I really focused on being explosive with the last few steps of my runup and using the best possible technique and I found myself getting more height than I ever have done before. Got it on the second attempt, was pretty happy about that, I've grabbed and then fallen off or just outright missed the top of that wall so many times it's nice to break the curse. Did some bits and pieces in that area including a pretty tricky tic tac to crane which wasn't considered possible by Ed and Jamie. Sometime when there's less people around and it's all less chaotic I should have a proper look over Millenium Square again, it's a much underappreciated spot and I feel certain there's more to be done with it.

Anyhow, on, predictably to Morrisons. Having made it all the way along the gradually increasing in height wall using catpasses off the floor, I decided to work on other things in the same manner. Firstly, I catpassed the highest bit of the wall again a few times to make sure I am becoming comfortable with it. The answer to this was yes, which is good as it means I am now comfortable catpassing stuff above shoulder height. So anyway, I spent a good bit of time working my way along the wall with speed passes and pop catpasses (as in clearing the wall, not just popping onto it). The speed passes were pretty scarey but I got a fair way along the wall before my confidence gave out. Something to work on. Pop catpassing over walls of a reasonable thickness like the Morrisons one is pretty difficult, however it is definatley a useful movement and worthy of more training time in the future. Was just lining up to repeat the big running armjump when a security lady spoiled the fun. Oh well, can't have it all your own way.

Onwards and upwards to the uni where I had a good look at the catpass armjump across the stairs by the entrance. Frustratingly, trial runs on the bit without the stairs underneath proved that it's comfortably within my reach (but the landing wall is not high enough in this section for it to be landable). However, there is a huge pile of decomposing leaves in the takeoff area for the bit over the stairs and benath that, a load of slippery mud. So if Scott and myself really want to do this, then we're going to have to shift all of the leaves and then leave the mud to dry. Fantastic. What are dead leaves doing around in spring anyway?! Went on to the dash wall area, somewhere I haven't visited for ages. Dash wall is pretty much the perfect wall for vaulting practice so it was great fun to let rip with flat out speed passes and cat passes over it and enjoy flying as far as possible. Revisited an old armjump which took me months to do back in the day, didn't even bat an eyelid doing it this time. Sonic (forgotten your real name, sorry) helpfully showed me a place I'd never noticed before in the area. Had a lovely standing armjump and precision to reverse it over a moderatley deep hole in the ground. Did the armjump about 10 times, building confidence and tecnique. Irritatingly, when I get tired, my climbups adopt sloppy habbits, I transition too early, making the climbups slow and cutting my wrists. So I need to be stricter with myself on that. The precision back was a fair mental challenge, faced with about 10 foot of drop beneath me and about 9/10 foot to travel with a drop of a foot and a bit on my side, it was quite hard to get done. The problem was, even when I did it and repeated it plenty of times, I wasn't able to relax like I normally would on that kind of jump and land softly, I was landing far too heavily as a result of my lack of confidence not letting me relax before I landed.

Headed off out the top of the Uni onto some other spots. Revisited lots of stuff that used to seem difficult, it's really nice being able to do that sort of stuff much easier now. I was starting to develop concerns about my back again by this stage and so started doing less. Eventually we ended up in a really cool little area in an estate that I've never been to before but some of the others had. There were loads of cool little technical movements to do there and it was great fun. Unfortunatley, after landing one running jump over and obstacle onto another, I felt my back spasm with pain. I knew immediatley at that point I was more or less finished for the day, unfortunatley.

We made our way back into town via the estate across the road from the swimming pool and the overpass from the swimming pool. Had time to eye-up the 13 foot level armjump in the estate that tempts us every time. I didn't even bother trying because my back was not up to any sort of impact, not even just dropping off the takeoff wall. Ed pointed out that it's also doable as a running precision across a different point. I think though that before too long, these will get done because it is most definatley possible, just yet another test of confidence and commitment. Likewise the 12 foot armjump at the swimming pool itself. But I'm not going to obsess over those, they'll get done eventually and there's no sense in rushing, particularly not with an injury.

Anyway, with all my work and Duke Of Edinburgh, looks like two weeks of rest ahead, I'll still work on my conditioning though. If my back persists after the rest, I will go get medical help.

Plenty done, plenty more to aim for.

Oh and here's a cool pic of me and Ed (the little guy haha) as we were making our way back through the estate yesterday:

Life...

It's been a while since I updated this and to be perfectly honest I can't really remember what I did last week other than that I had another fantastic barefoot session on monday. Thursday, friday, saturday and sunday I was in Krakow, Poland on a trip visiting Auschwitz and some other interesting places. Both the places we visited and the partying in the evenings were real eye-openers for me. I can't really summarise it but it's definatley changed my outlook on life. I've realised that life is short, futile, unpredictable and can easily be ruined. In The Shawshank Redemption there is the recurring quote "get busy livin or get busy dyin". I most definatley intend to get busy livin because you never know what tomorrow may bring, I'm going to live life to the full in every respect. I now have a personal flickr for my photography, I'm slowly processing photos from my trip, I'll post the link on here eventually once I'm done, there are some pretty powerful ones. Anyway, a couple of "people shots" from the trip taken by others:
















All of us in an underground chapel in the salt mines.

Me, Mike, Cam and Toby in the legendary pub/club that was CK Browar with 5 litres of beer that cost less than £10. Gotta love Poland.

Fear is only a four letter restriction in the back of my mind...

Thursday: Illness, still. Grip training and some light conditioning to keep me occupied.

Friday: Actually felt worse than thursday, couldn't face up to the thought of waterpolo fitness, had an easy night.

Saturday: Where to start, hmm. Got out of bed to see that it was grey but dry outside. Fortunate considering the rain of friday. Got up as normal, had the choice of sprinting for the early train or waiting 30 mins more and walking for the later train. Of course I sprinted for the early train, extremely grateful that my trusty Berghaus 640 bag actually lets me do parkour movements whilst staying pinned to my back. Parkour applied practically I suppose. Anyhow, got into Leeds, arrived at the Art Gallery. None of the people I normally train with were there so I just got busy training on my own whilst the others seemed to prefer sitting around doing nothing. Got absolutley loads done, still finding new movements at the Art Gallery, also conquered a few of them that previously scared me including armjumping onto a corner and the precision back (mental challenges rather than physical). Interupted this briefly to patch up "Sonic" who'd put a lovely hole in his leg on the exact same precision Scott put one in his leg on (though Scott's was worse I have to say). Cleaned it up, covered it up with a self-adhesive dressing and he was up and running again. Toby and Pete were both there, both on their second ever training session. Really enjoyed teaching them new stuff and the speed they're progressing is fantastic. They're both really well motivated and prepared to listen and try which is pretty much all you could wish for in pupils. Ed and Jamie turned up after a bit and joined in with the teaching. They also joined in with coming up with new movements, culminating in a tic-tac crane which is a very quick and previously unthought of route up part of the Art Gallery. Failed miserably at persuading Ed and Jamie to try the running variation of the bollard armjump. I suppose having my height makes the step-up takeoff easier to handle for me. Before too long I need to have a look at doing it from the next bollard which will require much more commitment in the takeoff. I think I spent a good 3 hours just at that end of the Art Gallery, training pretty much everything under the sun, all the time feeling more confident and more proficient than I ever have done before.

Next up was Morrisons with a brief stopoff at the semi-famous muscle up bar. Failed miserably at planche en strength but not really very surprising, didn't feel at all strong on saturday, illness really saps your strength and energy. As ever, more training required, looks like this illness has nicely derailed my planche progress, having managed planche en strength before I was a bit gutted about this, certainly puts me a long way away from planche en force in my current state.

Anyhow, enough of my muscle up woes, back to parkour and Morrisons. Knocked off some other stuff that fear used to stop me from doing there. Did the armjump from the sculpture to the rail instead of to the wall. Did a fairly nice climbup and flicked straight over. Was pleased about that, had never even flicked over that before. Repeated it a few times to make sure I was comfortable with it. In reality I should've done that ages ago but it was satisfying to get it done and remind myself I can do much more in the armjump department. Next up, I stuck the big flowerbed precision, it's been a few weeks since I first made that and I failed miserably last week when I tried it. Stuck it twice and had plenty more near-misses. Still playing with my technique but I think I have a pretty effective one now. 10 foot distance with a drop of around half a foot makes it a fair challenge, hope to get it consistent before too long. Next up was another thing that fear had prevented me from doing for ages, I'd had plenty of aborted runs at it in the past. The running armjump there. It took me too many attempts to sort my runup out so that I could just sprint flat out at it but once I had that, I had a quick trial run and then went for it. Thankfully I landed fine despite getting surprised in the air that I was actually going to hit the target haha. Spent a fair while working on ambidextirity on passements. I then worked on my splitfoot catpasses, in particular clearing high obstacles, something again I used to mentally struggle with. Before long I found myself clearing walls higher than my shoulders with catpasses, I think my technique has finally matured into something truely effective. Again, stuff that would've terrified me up until today. Rounded it off by introducing Ed and Jamie to the crane jumps we did on tuesday, I was pleased to see that I'd improved at them, got straight up first attempt without resorting to using my hands for balance which is good. Scott joined us midway through the Morrisons session, however his back injury was severely limiting him, get well soon Scott!

Next up Scott took us to an overlooked spot on the way to the Playhouse. There wasn't a huge amount of stuff but there were some fun things to do. There was a fairly large running armjump that I underestimated on my first attempt, somehow rescuing it with a surprise one handed armjump landing. Glad to see my instincts work in that sort of situation. Did it a few more times, two and one handed. Dan and myself then worked on a big running jump up a couple of feet from a bench across a 9 foot gap. Another commitment and mental test, required a very fast runup and an explosive takeoff. Dan landed it first with a crane and with his encouragement I follwed him up with a crane of my own. However, I didn't get my trailing leg far enough forward to allow it to absorb the impact properly meaning I got a nice dose of shock in my ankle. So next time I do the jump I either need to land it two footed or bring my trailing leg further forwards if I crane it. Also did a catpass armjump there which Scott picked out. Involved catpassing a high rail, flying across a pavement and then grabbing a slippery wall. Catpassing high rails is yet another thing I used to hate. Took one go at it just to check I was happy with the catpass and then sprinted at it and made the armjump easily. Irritatingly the wall was slippery enough that I did the transition in the climbup phase and then fell straight off the wall!

We then arrived at the Playhouse which we haven't visited for a good few weeks. The thing with the Playhouse is it doesn't have a huge amount of things to do, however there are some fantastic things there. First on the agenda was repeating the tricky standing armjump from the rail. Quickly despatched that and felt very comfortable with it, good since that was an achievement a month and a bit ago. Next up was to do the same armjump but this time in the style of Owen, from the wall. Took a while to mentally prepare, first attempt didn't quite come off, slightly underjumped it so I couldn't hold onto the landing. Second time I was even more determined, gave it everything I had and landed it properly. The wall has a huge rounded edge and is slippery on top making it pretty damn awkward. So I was really glad to do the armjump and climbup. By this point my energy levels were getting low so I decided to break my usual policy and not force myself to repeat it. Instead I moved onto what for me is the most psychologically challenging precision in the entire of Leeds, the "River Gap". Just over 9 foot and completely level. It must've taken me about 10 minutes of preparation but I repeated it, the main difference to the only other time I did it being that I stuck it this time, last time I was actually overshooting and so not able to stop myself!

We then headed on to the Royal Armouries but by this point I was basically too exhausted to do anything much. Tried the catpass armjump a few times, made it only to somehow hit the rail rather than grip it with one of my hands. I then tried a standing crane, making it but overcomitting at my ankle's expense again. At this point I realised that my exhaustion was getting the better of me and to continue was risking serious injury. Decided to quit whilst I was ahead. I suddenly felt like a very tired and ill human being again rather than a traceur with the world at his feet. Ah well, can't detract from what was still an incredibly productive day. Spent the rest of the afternoon/evening messing around with Ed, Scott and Jamie, not much more training got done unsurprisingly.


Saturday was amazing for me, it made me realise that with the correct mental state, I can achieve some incredible things. I need to keep this momentum and apply my abilities and confidence to some of the other areas in Leeds. I have some big challenges indeed lined up for myself. It was also nice for me to be the one trying to get Ed and Jamie to do things rather than the other way around. I wouldn't say we're competitive but for so long I've always been that bit behind these two and it's nice to be making a contribution to pushing our boundaries as a group. Will have to hope for good weather and lots of trainings for the easter holidays! I also really need to go climbing again.

Alistair Goes To Leeds... Trainings Ensue

Didn't all work out quite as planned...

Sunday: Rested, friday and saturday caught up with me in a big way. Got plenty of sleep.

Monday: Mostly rest again, did some grip exercises and some leg work.

Tuesday: Good ol' super tuesday when my lessons finish at 10:35am. Used the first two free periods to do all my maths, handed it in, changed into my training clothes, sprinted down to the station near school only to find they'd rudely cancelled my train. Oh well, got another train to Shipley and karma obviously owed me one as the Leeds train from Skipton was delayed, allowing me to sprint across and get on it, cutting my delay down majorly. Arrived in Leeds, left the station right as some snowfall began. Met Scott and Jim at the Art Gallery, snow soon stopped and the wind dried everything off quickly. Spent a few hours training around the Art Gallery finding new movements, becoming more proficient at existing ones and generally training our asses off. Extended our traversing challenges even further with some creative thinking. Dan turned up after a while and joined in as well. Scott finally found a way into the tree above the red railings and made his way up to the top from where you can see onto the roof of the Art Gallery. Tried the armjump from the midpoint of the stair rail to the wall again, still can't get my feet up enough to stick it, that's a mental rather than a physical problem though. Will have to devote some serious time and focus to that one sometime soon. We visited the church briefly, there's an awkward armjump that goes sideways from a staircase to a narrowish column. Ages ago when Jim from Lincoln visited, inspired by him I did the armjump from the second to top step of the stairs. I'd never had the courage to repeat it since. Did it 4 times this time, felt far easier than previously which is progress I guess. Will be trying to take it up another step before too long I guess. Finished up at Morrisons, did some cranes I'd never tried before. Thanks to the third snowfall of the day, bits of it were too wet to use. My precision distance seemed down a little on my peak a few weeks ago, will have to get training to sort that out, particularly if I'm going to go beyond where I got to at my peak. And we finished off with a mini Hell Night which was good stuff and a reminder that we really need to get Hell Night going again in Leeds. All in all a pretty awesome session. Walking home from the station as the sun went down I felt tired but satisfied, times like that you're exstatic just to be alive.

Wednesday: Illness. Fantastic. Woke up with a sore throat, no appetite and stomach pains. Took the day off school. Pity because I was planning on doing my 12 mile circuit today. Anyway, feeling better now, will go back to school tomorrow just because I can't afford to miss anymore. Hopefully will be up to strength again by the weekend.

Fence + Scott + Hypergravity = Hilarity?

Thursday: Thursday I went in the gym at school which is something I haven't done in ages. Funny watching all the muscle-heads gawping at me doing pistols, muscle ups and negatives (they'd never seen any of them before!). It has a silly split pullup bar which I can't describe but is pretty crap for muscle ups, did planche en momentum on it a while ago, this time I focused entirely on planche en force. Did 10 reps with a friend gently pushing me through the transition. I still feel really, really weak during one little phase of the transition, I guess I'll just have to keep on doing it until it goes away. About a year and a half ago in the gym I tried to lift 40kg overhead from the floor, did one rep and dropped it. For fun, I did the same weight again this time, did 10 reps with good technique. So I suppose that's progress. Worked more on my squatting technique, going deep with 80kg. Focused very heavily on upper body stuff because that's my current priority. Also realised that finally I'm consistent with pistols, did 10 reps on each leg unsupported with no balance issues. Which is cool since a month ago I couldn't even do them on my left leg because of my history of knee troubles.

Friday: Friday night was a mate's 17th at a bar so I knew the evening was a writeoff for training. Fortunatley there was still good ol' after school waterpolo fitness so I did an hour of that. Did loads of evil swimming stuff designed to trash your stamina. Felt really good afterwards. Realised that I need to re-learn racing turns and improve my head-up front crawl technique. We did ballwork after that to cool down, it's amazing just how good our passing is as a team now, very accurate, controlled and fast. Oh and I came up with yet another method of training for planche en force. People suggest doing muscle ups on the edge of a pool to train for them. Well the ends of our pool are raised about 30cm above the water level for the starting blocks and I can happily do en force on it and not really feel anything. However, I realised that I could simply use collumns of floats on the poolside to raise my arms and increase the resistance. I guess by the end the tower was about 1 meter tall, perhaps a bit lower. Varied the height and did lots of planche en force and momentum on all sorts of different heights. It's actually amazingly good training and as part of my drive to get en force, I'm going to be doing it as often as possible. So at least I made something of the evening training-wise.

Saturday: Had to be up at 6:00am on saturday for the first of the sessions I need to do (20 hours total) over the next two years to renew my NPLQ. Actually felt surprisingly good but was annoyed to see everything looking rather wet. Got into Leeds about 11 after the lifeguarding session and in those hours, everything had dried up majorly! So that was pretty cool. Did the same sort of stuff as usual, for me it was more a day of watching other people achieve their goals rather than doing anything new of my own. But congrats to Ben for doing two armjumps he's been wanting to do for ages in the same day and also to Hollie for her first ever muscle up other than on a springy gymanstics bar. I love seeing other people progress. We also did a bit of tricking and buildering, I'm an aweful tricker and I know it but I'm trying to improve and everyone is being really helpful with trying to teach me. Worked mostly on b-kicks, having difficulty keeping my upper body horizontal. Whilst doing this apparently I did a surprisingly good 360 crescent by accident. Did some stuff that should help me build up to the 540 kick as well. I've got a long way to go but I'm having fun. Buildering was fun, how much stronger both Hollie and myself are now is amazing, the court wall seemed like a stroll in the park when previously it was an achievement for me to make it across it once. Ben Anderson the amature photographer who shoots a fair bit with us was out for a bit with us today during the tricking and buildering. He captured this incredibly surreal one of me on the court wall doing the "corner" problem which seemed like a massive achievement 6 months ago. There's a fisheye lens and a remotley triggered flash gun being used which is why it looks so crazy. He's an awesome guy to work with and he's talking about doing some more focused sessions in the future which should produce some incredible results. The rest of the set (including two more of me) is here. So yeah, the day went pretty much as normal. There seems to be a new trend for clearing off early in Leeds which is a shame. But fortunatley Scott can never say no to some more training so after everyone else had gone we did some fantastic stuff at a covered place in the university (by now it was raining again). There was a big set of low bike rails we experimented loads with finding new movements on. As ever, Scott managed to push me a bit to try stuff I struggle with mentally, this is why for me training with Scott is great, he makes me push harder. We did some fun little plyometrics drills over the rails as well. Oh and as for the title, earlier on in the day, Scott was giving me a piggy back (in the style of part of our Hell Night), came to a lowish fence and of course being Scott decided to try to running jump it. He clipped a foot and went flying, good stuff. Now I have some idea why Hollie hates it so much when I do precisions with her on my back!

Hopefully I'll get into Leeds sometime during the week with Scott and we can have a really, really focused session like the tuesday one ages ago. There's stuff I can physically do in Leeds that I've let my underconfidence stop me from doing. And somehow with Ed, Jamie and Hollie all wanting to film stuff for videos at the moment, people wanting to visit different spots than me and other stuff that I won't go into, I haven't found the mental focus on a saturday to go get big stuff done. With Scott there shouting "Get it done!" at me and reduced distractions, I think that's exactly what I need right now.

Oh and I forgot to mention, I discovered the Leeds Half Marathon is at the start of May. I think I might enter it just for the experience, I know my time will be pretty poor, currently I can run a long way, just not very fast. It would be interesting to see how I cope with it. Planned out a very hilly 12 mile circuit locally, will try that asap, if I survive it I know I'm up for the half marathon haha!

Over and out.

Walking Barefoot On Summer... Well Almost

After my abortive attempt at blogging 6 months ago, I feel ready to give it a try again now. So anyway, I suppose I'll start from the previous weekend.

Saturday: Saturday was Ed's birthday so we all headed off to Barnsley Metrodome, hoping to go do some tricking into the diving pool. Unfortunatley the 1m springboard had vanished and for non-divers the 3m springboard and 5m platform were a fairly intimidating thought. Plus they seem to have introduced a total flip ban there. Full marks to Scott for doing a backtuck off the 3m anyway and getting one of the reddest backs I've ever seen. Ended up spending most of the time in the main pool diving off the side and generally pissing around which was fun. I got to show off my lifeguarding skills as well haha. After giving up on this we looked around Barnsley for anywhere to train, failed completely other than finding a precision too big for any of us to stick and some half-decent scaffolding. Attempted a planche en force on the scaffolding, still getting stuck in the transition. More training required. Went back into Leeds afterwards, trained a bit, I couldn't commit to the rail armjump at the Art Gallery since I felt too tired, definatley a short term goal though since I now feel certain I can make it. Did a traversing challenge on a church (and got informed it wasn't a climbing wall by a CSO). Then after most people had gone Scott, Boydo and I did some challenges involving not touching the ground at the Art Gallery. Also had some fun in the tree by the library and I finally stuck some of the dynos there. Taught Boydo how to land softer and use the sideways landings that have become fashionable in Leeds (with good reason!) thanks to Scott. Oh and I introduced Scott to the joys of cardio, something we've resolved to make the rest of the Leeds guys do a lot more of. It was good to see Ed happy anyway, even if it didn't quite turn out as planned.

Sunday: Sunday is usually a day when I either do some more movement training or have a rest. Tried to get Scott to go to Leeds but he was too knackered from previous training so I decided to do something I haven't done for a while, go running. Covered ~5 very hilly miles up to the tarn and back again at a fair pace (took ~40 mins), running entirely using Erwan's technique of striking with the balls of the feet, touching the heel down and then onto the balls of the feet again. Seems a more pleasant way to run than thudding around heel striking. Plus, it had my calves in a right state for a couple of days afterwards, gotta be good stuff!

Monday: I won't go into the reasons why because that's not what this blog's for but Monday was pretty much a disaster. Everything spiraled out of control (work, music, other commitments etc.) and the shit hit the fan as it were on sunday night./monday and so I was tired, underslept and felt aweful. Had an easy evening, did my shoulder conditioning program and then some assorted pullups and muscle ups. Got to bed earlyish.

Tuesday: Felt much, much better having actually got some sleep and cleared out my schedule. Tuesday night was waterpolo training as ever, with our coach away on a swimming gala most of the team used it as the perfect excuse to skive off. However, me and Sam turned up and both being lifeguards were able to run our own session. Sam had to go early so we only had around 40 mins of pool time so we decided to do our usual circuit session and cut back on the swimming. After a quick 8 width warmup and some burst training we got going into the usual circuit which goes as follows with sprint swimming inbetween stations positioned as far apart as possible in the pool:

10 x Elevated feet pressups (chest to floor and at a slowish pace to get maximum benefit)
10 x Reverse dips on the raised bit of the poolside (absolutley killer by the later circuits)
30 x Squats (I would replace this bit with pistols but the rest of the team can't do them)
10 x Burpees with two pressups per rep
10 x 3 second ab holds, going from 45 degrees to about 70 to just off the floor and back up again.
10 x 3 second hyperextension holds (going as high as possible)

We completed three whole circuits which when added on to the swimming and the rest made for a good workout. Did some more shoulder exercises later on and some more assorted pullups.

Wednesday: Here's where the title comes into things. Not being one to waste some vaguely summerish weather, I put on my beloved Nike running shorts and my pro vent sleeveless and decided to pretend it was a lot warmer than it actually was! Did the entire session barefoot as part of my efforts to ensure I always run, land and move with biomechanically correct footwork and also as part of my efforts to toughen my feet up. Did lots of precisions on the rocks in my garden and lots of balancing. Did some climbups which are progressing reasonably. Just generally enjoyed moving around barefoot, did a bit of quad as well. I love being barefoot, it's a whole area of sensations we miss out on normally and means we can avoid being dependant on footwear. Played around in the trees a bit, there's some stuff I can tell would be amazing to do but I simply need more upper body strength for (dynos and awkward laches). For the first time this year I felt slightly tricking-inclined so had a bit of fun playing around on the lawn with cartwheels, roundoffs and other stuff (Hollie always mocked me for not being able to cartwheel, I think I've sorted it and my roundoffs now hahaha). Still can't handspring fluently on flat ground which is really starting to annoy me. Messed around with 540 kicks and b kicks, not that I can do either very well. I promise myself now I will actually overcome my fear of flips this summer and get some proper tricking abilities outside. I really, really want to start tumbling well but I need to sort out my handsprings first. I imagine I'll have to get Ed and/or Jamie to help with this. Later on tonight I'll probably do a cardio session since it's been a few days.

All in all not too bad, I feel like I'm becoming a lot more confident with my current level and my body is really starting to give me the strength to do what I want to do. I have a very good base to work with and now it's really time to push things up a step, hopefully we'll get a sunny day in Leeds on saturday and I can push myself. Oh and Planche En Force by the end of the month is still most definatley a goal and I'm working really, really hard to achieve it.