First Trip To Lisses

Meeting the Leicester People and Hell Nights
Some time in November/December of 2006 I went to train in Leicester for the first time, and met the Leicester traceurs, of whom the most well known is probably Blane. A few weeks later I started to go to their Hell Nights, a couple of hours of intense parkour related conditioning as many of you will know.

It was well worth the journey from Nottingham to Leicester for Hell Night on Thursday, as at the time I was 15 (really 18) so the train price was only about £4 return. The overall journey took about an hour to get their too, but it was more than worth it for the benefits. I felt incredibly privileged to be training with such an awesome group of people and benefiting from their experience. I remember the first Hell Night I went to, a week or two before Christmas '06, jogging around a soaking wet field, shimmying along goalposts, crawling, climbing, hanging, in complete darkenss and freezing cold, with my arms throbbing and thinking "I only met these people a couple of weeks ago and now I'm in a wet field in Leicester". Then catching the train back at about 10.30 at night, my arms heavy and the endomorphins filling me with a great sense of satisfaction. This is how I met the Leicester people.

Going To Lisses
Some time in early Janinjuary they all started talking about going to Lisses for a week, and I asked if I could come too, and they said yes, so I was happy :) It was pretty cheap too, even factoring in that the Eurostar cost £50 more than it could have if we'd booked earlier. I also had a bit of trouble with college too, because for some reason Nottinghams half term was a week later than everywhere else in the country that term, so I'd have to miss a week at college. This was ok though, I just had to meet up with a happy Secretary of Something and talk about how the trip had been booked about 6 months in advance and there was no way we could've known Nottingham would be out of sync with everywhere else in the country. She said the trip was fine and I wouldn't lose my EMA £100 bonus if I promised I'd visit the Eiffel Tower and Arc de Triumph. I grinned and promised I would.

3 weeks later I was stood in Leicester train station with a bag of clothes and marvelling about how I was about to go to France for a week with people I'd met only a few months ago. I'll admit, my crazy unjustified paranoia played up a little bit that this was all a trick and they were going to take me to some random french equivelent of Hostel and eat me, but luckily this crazy visions proved unfounded. Everyone turned up on time and we caught the train to London St Pancras without incident.

Thats a lie, there was one small incident on the train. Midland Mainline provide free tea and coffee on their trains to London, and this particular journey it tasted exactly like feet. I was not best pleased, but we were all to excited to really care much about foot-tea.

From St Pancreas we subway'd it to the Eurostar place, and from the Eurostar place we Eurostar'd to Paris. The train to Paris is long and the food is expensive, but we made it there. From there under the lead of Blane we caught the right train to Evry, after almost getting on the wrong one. We were all knackered by this point but Lisses was getting near and we all knew it. We got off in Evry and were all really excited again. Blane showed us the Manpower roofgap and we all went "ooh" and "aah". But when we went to the bus stop we hit our first major snag. It was stangely deserted, and after interviewing two french chavettes (female chavs, but as we were in france this is pronounced "sharvettes") who found my accent in french "mignon et hilarant" I found out we'd missed the last bus to Lisses. And so we had to trek it down the motorway with all our luggage to the Formule1 hotel next to Lisses.

One good thing came out of this though. Walking down the motorway and seeing the Dame Du Lac emerge from behind a hill, silhouetted against the sky and slightly lit by the full moon, was an entirely unforgettable picture. It was awesome.

Once we got to the hotel we booked in, dumped our stuff in the room and practically ran to Lisses. We got to the Dame and started climbing all over it, despite it being about 4am and soaking wet. I almost jizzed with the excitement of actually being there, and I suspect Callum actually did.

Living For Parkour
That week in Lisses, I have to say, has been one of my happiest so far. If you are a traceur you know the kind of happiness training brings. You don't have to worry about anything, all that exists is yourself, the people you are with and the environment you are training in. Making a movement successfully brings adrenaline and happiness, seeing other people do things brings the same thing. All that matters is the next movement you want to do. It is life in simplicity, living for your sport, and no matter what your level is and what sport you do I think this comes from our time as cavemen and this is what lots of us secretly want to return to.

This week was that. We'd wake up in the morning, go to the supermarché and buy food for the day, eat breakfast and warm up, then train till about 6-7oclock, snacking as we went. Then we'd rest for a couple of hours and have dinner, then go out again untill about 11-12 at night. I won't bore you with a minute by minute account of everything that we did. Some things that stand out in my memory though, I will talk about.

One night we went out to train in a little industrial estate across the road from the hotel, there was a little balance and skill challenge that to every intent and purpose amounted to a real life platform game. There was even a little section with ballards that sunk down when you stood on them, so you had to jump from one to another before it got to the floor. As we were doing it it started to rain badly, and soon it was soaking wet. But we kept training and invented new and harder challenges and the rain just added everyone. Two things I remember, a precision about 7' in distance upwards, onto the edge of a slippy, wet and curved wall less than 3 inches wide. It took some of us ages to do, so many challenges to overcome in one jump, but we all did it, and it felt great. The other thing was slightly later, precisioning downwards onto tiny, slippy stone ballards, no more than a couple of inches squared. I remember thinking how earlier that day I wouldn't have considered doing it in the dry in daylight for fear of slipping and spraining my ankle, but now all 7 of us were drilling this small precision in the middle of the night and the cold and the wet.

The thing is, if I was to take you there now and show you these things, I'm pretty sure they wouldn't seem that challenging to do, or maybe not even that interesting to spend as long as we did in that place. But the reason it was so awesome was because of the mindset of our training and the company we were in. I don't think I've ever come across a training atmosphere as good as with the Leicester guys in that week. Since it was February and wet a lot of the time we trained pretty much only little things like this, technical challenges that required thought, confidence and commitment. But I doubt the week could've been much better if it was dry, and I probably wouldn't have learnt as much.

Nothing but parkour in the company of 6 other awesome people with the same goals and mindset as me for a whole week, It was awesome :)

Since I came back from Lisses people have told me so many times that since when I came back from Lisses for the first time I'd "gotten good" (grammar rules don't apply to quotes). In a way I agree, that week definately affected my training in ways I probably can't even see myself. I didn't feel any massive improvement in myself but I was definately seeing everything in a new way. But I don't think I can credit that to Lisses itself, more to the people. I really reccomend that every traceur takes a visit to Lisses at some point in their training. Doesn't matter whether in summer or winter, as you can see you'll take away just as much either way if you approach it the right way. And whats better, you can start write a blog about it and treat your trip to Lisses as though its a religious pilgramage, which in a sort of way, it is.

You can now enjoy the video Blane put together, mainly of the last two days of the trip as we barely filmed at all.

Much love and respect to Blane, Callum, Wing, Timmy, Alex and Joe for making that trip the best.