Hey Guys
Heres an an interesting article about some traceuses practicing in london lead by Shirley Darlington. The reporters definition of parkour is a bit rudimentary, but the rest of the article is worth a read,
On the Thursday morning I arrive in London, my phone pings with a message from a teenage mother and school dropout named Shirley Darlington: "Kilburn tube station, 7pm."
I get there 10 minutes early, but about 20 women are already warming up, including the British movie actress Christina Chong and her sister Lizzi, a professional dancer.
Every Thursday, Shirley emails the 100 or so members of her all-female Parkour crew, revealing the secret location for that night's challenge. She keeps the venue a surprise so her crew never knows what to expect, and she keeps guys away because the biggest threat to Parkour - as even Parkour's all-male founders would agree - is testosterone.
"Young guys turn up, and lots of times all they want is the flash and not the fundamentals," says Dan Edwardes, the master instructor who gave Shirley her start. "They want to backflip off a wall and leap around on rooftops. With a group of lads, you'll get the show-off, the questioner, the giddy one. But in a women's group, there's none of that. It's very quiet. They get to it."
What I was after was even more fundamental than the fundamentals. I'd only come to Parkour by accident while chasing the secrets of the most remarkable athletes of our time - World War Two resistance fighters.
I'd become fascinated with the underground when I realised it wasn't made up of hardened soldiers. Often, they were civilians hiding behind enemy lines who had to live off the land while attacking Hitler's forces in gruelling hit-and-run operations.
Take Crete - on that small Greek island, farmers and shopkeepers were joined by British academics and poets who'd essentially been recruited just because they knew Ancient Greek. For the next four years, these misfits routinely covered ultra-marathon distances over mountain peaks and pulled off feats of strength and endurance that would stagger an Olympic athlete. I wanted to learn - what was their secret? And could I master it too?............
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