I just had some of the best two training days I’ve had in months. What started as just me showing around two cool traceurs from Eastern Washington to our favorite spots, turned into two crazy days of conditioning and intense mental challenges.

What happened

Saturday we started at Gasworks which was fun but rather light compared to when we went to UW later that night, and Freeway Park the next day. I think the change came from us watching Stephane Vigroux’s interview with UF before we went back out, because difficult repetition training ensued afterwards.

UW

We found a few lines at UW we could simply make a circle of and do over and over and over. We didn’t count but we definitely got tired. Then I showed them some of the great traversal challenges UW offers and we studied those quite deeply. We finished at UW with some great barefoot training at night which is something I have never done before. Training barefoot, after a lot of strength work, at night with limited visibility, is a huge mental challenge for me. I absolutely loved it, everything that I would normally find really simple in the day with shoes becomes a scary thing in the dark without shoes. Just a simple jump out of a cat leap with a precise landing becomes something you have to dedicate total focus to. It was seriously mentally draining training…

Freeway Park

The next day we slept a lot and Freeway a bit later than scheduled (sorry if we missed anyone). I realized two things. One, that Freeway definitely changes a lot in the rain (previously I had only played around at the fountain area in the rain). And two, the gauntlet line we were testing parts of is really really difficult. I thought it wouldn’t be that hard because it doesn’t have much “normal” single move exercises (ie pushups, squats) or circuits of any kind when you would have to do something more than once. But what it does have, is a huge amount of quadrupedal movement which always surprises me in how difficult it can be. I think the line has some promise, but it needs to be done on a dry day or adapted to suit the wet I think.

All in all a great weekend, my thanks to Loren and Eli for making the trip out!