Parkour, Freerunning, and a continuum of movement

[stevecooper]

Hi, All. This is my first post and my second day as an urban ranger. So I just wanted to say hi, and thanks, and offer a couple of ideas I've had.

I don't know if any of you have heard of parkour, or free-running, but it's an athletic way to move about cities; it's a form of running, leaping, and bouncing around urban landscapes - over gates and walls and obstacles, across roofs and down stairwells and over fences. Seems to me to be Urban Ranging's over-enthusiastic cousin.

Anyway, that got me thinking that urban ranging (as the site presents it) is part of a continuum; from ambling about to u-ranging to fartlek to jogging to free-running - different ways to move around the city on foot.

I mention it because I am hoping to get fitter, using urban ranging as a base and throwing in more athletic bits as I get fitter and faster. I'll urban range everywhere, but throw in a hundred yards of jogging every so often, or bounce over low walls, or detour across parks; basically moving as quickly as my body and the terrain lets me.

As another thought, has anyone heard about the pastime of urban exploration? Check out infiltration magazine (http://infiltration.org/); basically, it's going into places not designed for the public, but which the public can get into. Seems to click nicely with the idea of urban ranging.

Anyway, I just thought I'd post because the board contained no references to fartlek, parkour, or free-running, all of which seem to be tools of the urban ranger in the goal of purposeful movement.

Here's a few links;

free-running: http://www.urbanfreeflow.com/fundamenta ... entals.htm
fartlek; http://uk.geocities.com/sandomenicorrc/fartlek.html
parkour; http://www.parkour.com/
urban exploration: http://infiltration.org/

Steve

PS: My god, but a good pair of shoes is important, isn't it? I just got some speed-hiking shoes, and the difference between those and normal street shoes is immense. Much more effort goes into propelling you forward, much less in just keeping you upright. Wear good shoes. This is my urban ranger motto.

[reinhard]

Steve,

Welcome and thanks for the links.

I think I'm too old and married for much of this stuff, but it's cool to read about. I grew up in new york city before the crime rate plunge and even though the places we were supposed to go were dangerous enough, we'd do a little "infiltration" of the (then) abandoned subway tunnels under riverside park when we wanted to really scare the hell out of ourselves (and girls we were trying to impress). It worked like a charm -- at least the first part. This one time a dozen of so of us strapping 10th grade youths ran out screaming because a third of us had seen a dude with a knife, another third a dude with an ax, and another third a dude with a gun (it was all the same dude -- a real Roshomon experience). Another time it was the girliest girl who resisted all our prudent, manly "uh, I think we should go back"s and insisted we press on forward.

Do keep us posted if you blend any of this stuff into an urban ranger routine -- I'm very interested, from a distance

I'll have to spend some more time with Parkour and Fartlek (great names, such mouthfeel, whatever they really mean) before commenting on them.

Thanks again,

Reinhard

[stevecooper]

I think parkour may well be beyond me, too. At least until I get bitten by a radioactive leopard and turned into leopardboy.

So far, I've tried to blend a bit of jogging with the ranging; I've gone to work in running shoes and a sweatshirt; walking fast and then throwing in a couple of hundred yards of jogging every now and then. I keep wanting to throw in a parkour-style vault over a fence or something, but I wuss out every time.

So for right now, my principle is to keep pushing myself. Walk to warm up, jog until I'm out of breath, walk in the gaps. I figure as long as I'm pushing a bit, I'll be getting fitter.

One of the things I really love about walking functionally is that it's not dead time, as gym time is. In fact, urban ranging is helping me claw back time from work - I walk faster, making my commute shorter. How many gym routines offer that as an advantage? Pukka.

And place seems to make a big difference, doesn't it? I live in (old) York, in the UK, and that's a small enough town that all the interesting bits are within, say, a three-mile radius; the town centre, the station, my house, my work, my friends. That makes walking suitable for everything, really, except a weekly shop. How does New York compare? I have the impression that American cities are designed more for car use. Are the things you can walk to fairly limited?

[david]

stevecooper,

Some American cities work pretty well for walking to get to work, school, shopping, etc.

Where I live in the central part of the country it's difficult for most people to get along without a car. The cities are simply laid out with car travel in mind. I do my urban rangering in the small 100-year-old neighborhoods which border the university campus where I work. The rangering is not so much about transportation for me as it is about maintaining my sanity and keeping my joints moving smoothly.

thanks,
David

[stevecooper]

Sanity's a worthy goal. Walking definately seems to affect the mind; thinking seems easier, when you're standing up and moving. Sitting down, I stew over things; walking, I come up with solutions. It's as though the progress of the feet drives the progress of the reason.

urbanhumanist.com coming right up, I think