Rochester Parkour Visitor's Weekend

A month or so ago, Bryan Augstein (Maryland) and KC Parsons (Michigan) told me they wanted to come up to visit me in Rochester. I met both of them on my trip this summer, and (through the wonders of free verizon-to-verizon texts) texted back and forth quite a bit during long bus rides. We became good friends, and so of course I was enthusiastic about having them come up! KC Decided to bring a close friend of his, Nate Manly (Michigan), and soon Jesse Danger (NYPK) and Christopher Price (Michigan) were added to the list of attendees. Soon enough... we were having ourselves a Rochester jam!

Jesse arrived at the bus station Thursday night, and we hung out with some friends and watched The Dark Knight on our projector downstairs. We went to sleep late, and then got up early for a workout at the gym. We left straight from there to go back to the bus station KC and Nate arrived early the next morning. After a great (and cheap!) dinner at the local diner, we came back to my house and... immediately dropped to the floor and went to sleep. Jesse and I had 3 hours of sleep and a workout, and KC and Nate had a 14 hour bus ride under their belt. We woke up 5 hours later and went to the Red Barn, the local rock climbing gym (it's a big red barn. Go figure!). Chris showed up, and we all packed in his pickup truck and went to the bus station to pick up Bryan.

Everyone was hungry again, so it was time for dinner. If it's your first time in Rochester, there is only one meal your hosts will give you: a garbage plate:



Ingredients: hash browns, chili sauce, macaroni salad, 2 hamburger patties, American cheese, diced raw onions, mustard, ketchup.

So... I sort of kind of challenged Jesse to an eating contest, to see who could finish theirs faster. We decided on to have a good, old fashioned gentlemen's wager: The loser had to eat a second one. Long story short, I didn't lose. I got annihilated. Destroyed. Pummeled into the ground. I still hold that it would have been at least a fair fight if it hadn't been for the mayo on the mac salad.. but alas. I ended up chickening out of the bet, but I accepted an alternate punishment: The Hundred Burpee Challenge. Outside. In the snow and wind and cold.

I have to say, I did fairly well. I've never actually done the Hundred Burpee Challenge before, and a time of 9:16 isn't shabby (all things considered). I did it without vomiting, which was A) A nice perk, and B) means I didn't try hard enough. This event gave rise to a series of challenges throughout the weekend, with a complex series of governing rules (such as the hundred burpee challenge is an acceptable alternative punishment for losing, but if you don't “one up” the previous challenge in some way (ex. Faster time, fewer clothes, etc), you had to do the original punishment as well).

We got back to my house that night, and things kind of slowed down. We spent the next few hours laying around my living room, half-trying to find something to do, but really just trying to recover from the garbage plates. Then someone saw the slacklines on the staircase, and we had an idea.

We hopped in cars, drove to a nearby abandoned Kodak building with a huge secluded parking lot, and played in the snow for a while. We ran and slid and played tag, explored some woods, and had some epic snowball fights.

Saturday was Parkour day! We woke up, Happydud's Emporium of Pancakes was once again visited, and then started piling on the layers. We drove up to campus to pick up the locals, and then drove over to Manhattan Square Park in downtown Rochester. After a good warm up (because it certainly was not warm out), we decided it was just too slippery and dangerous for Parkour training. Instead, we had a series of truly legendary snowball fights. We started in a field, then had a Capture the Flag match in another area that was a great mix of nature and urban environments, all the while snowballs flying everywhere. We wrapped up the day with a game of Humans vs Zombies – Snowball Style, then stopped by a coffee shop and a mexican resteraunt for dinner.

After warming back up at my house, we went to a playground for the night. While everyone else was either doing random strength training stuff (rings, muscle ups, finding routes through the playground), or having 2v1 wrestling matches (I still say it was a draw... if I can go that long without tapping out it has to count for something!), Jesse was busy constructing a sled out of two skis and a precision trainer he found in the back of my car.

Well, that was an awesome freaking sled. We went SO FAST. Graham, a local traceur and EMT (foreshadowing!), had brought a bunch of real sleds. We all took turns on the various sleds and picnic table (which, it turns out, makes a fantastic sled as long as you bail fast enough), until Chris went snowboarding on one of the sleds. Turns out, Grade 2 ankle sprains are the reason you use sleds as intended, and not as snowboards. Graham was able to wrap him up and make sure he was okay, but it was still a bummer.

The next day was gymnastics day! I went to our gym, Zenith Gymnastics, and taught my kids Parkour class, and then the visitors joined the RIT Gymnastics club in a gymnastics training session. It was loads of fun, people worked on everything from back tucks to side summis over things, from rings to jumping over things. It was a pretty productive session, and everyone had a lot of fun finally getting to run and jump and flip and horse around. We wrapped up the day with pizza and movies, and then I started shuttling people back to the bus station.

That wraps up the Rochester Parkour Visitor's Weekend. Not much actual Parkour, but still great fun was had by all. I'm glad we could give Nate a great first jam-weekend, and it was great seeing all my old friends again. We're already planning our next few gatherings!

New Parkour Classes at Zenith Gymnastics

Rochester Parkour is offering Parkour and Obstacle Coursing Classes on Sundays from 2:30pm to 3:30pm at Zenith Gymnastics. This class is geared to the 8-14 age bracket, but even if you aren't in this age range, please contact Zenith anyway and let them know you are interested. We will take your contact info and alert you when a new class opens up.

Located in Rochester, New York, Contact Zenith at 585-292-5370 and ask about Zac Cohn's Parkour classes now!

72 Hour Fast - Part 3

71 hours, 58 minutes into my 72 hour fast: I sat at the dinner table, my plate of food steaming in front of me. I didn't know how my stomach would take food, so I decided to start with small, easy to digest foods: Olives, raisins, grapes, assorted nuts, steamed broccoli and some salsa for dipping. I had some chicken prepared and ready to go on the grill, but I was going to give that another hour or so.

Sitting in my chair, I leaned over and inhaled deeply. When you don't eat for a long period of time, your sense of smell intensifies. I had gone to a grocery store earlier that day, and it was intoxicating. Walking into the store was like walking into a brick wall. I was inundated with smell, I just stopped and stood in the entrance, eyes closed, taking it all in. Charlie did the shopping, and I just ran from display to display, leaning over and inhaling deep.

I had two minutes left in my fast, and I spent it with my eyes closed, lost in smell. My phone hit midnight, and I began to eat. I was unsure how my stomach would accept food, so I wanted to take it slow. I ate my dinner nut by nut, raisin by raisin, olive by olive. It took me about an hour to finish my plate, but I enjoyed every bite of food to its fullest. I'd let the grapes sit in my mouth for up to a full minute, absorbing the taste, before biting just enough to let the juice leak out into my mouth. I'd finish cleaving the grape in half, and let the two halves wander around my mouth, saturating my taste buds with flavor. The broccoli dissolved in my mouth, and when ever something was dipped in the salsa my tongue was overwhelmed by the sensation. As I neared the end of my dinner, I grilled a chicken breast. I cleaned my plate of the first course just as the chicken finished, and I probably spent thirty minutes on the single filleted breast of chicken.

I learned a lot from my fast, but not all of it I can put into words. A good deal of it was just learning more about my body, becoming closer and more in tune with it.

The first and most obvious thing I learned was that I can go three days with only water without radically modifying my daily schedule. I led and participated in a parkour conditioning session, I juggled, I biked to and from campus several times, and I led a Taekwondo class. I got an average amount of sleep each night and only took one nap.

The more important thing I learned was how the body reacts to food deprivation. I kind of assumed that the first day would suck, and that it would just keep getting worse. The first day did suck, but the second and third day was actually very easy. I was telling people that it was “disappointingly easy.” After the body realizes it isn't getting food, something happens and you just stop feeling hungry.

Rating my hunger on a scale of 1 to 10, this is how I would break down the days:

Day 1:
Constant hunger (average): 4
# of hunger pangs: 15-20
Severity of hunger pangs: 7-8

Day 2:
Constant hunger (average): 2
# of hunger pangs: 2-5
Severity of hunger pangs: 5

Day 3:
Constant Hunger (average): 1
# of hunger pangs: 0
Severity of hunger pangs: N/A

So you can see, by the third day my hunger was really just background noise that could be easily turned off. Really, by the second day it was just background noise. The hunger pangs of Day #2 came typically around meal times, which I think was more mental and habit-driven than hunger driven. So really, my 72 hour fast was pretty easy once I got past the first day.

Upon later research, I found out that complete fasting isn't the best way to experience hunger. I could have made it a LOT harder for myself if I had waited most of the first day, and then had three almonds for dinner. The second day, had a strawberry for breakfast and then maybe a single bite of chicken for dinner. The third day could have been a half dozen raisins and a peanut for breakfast and then a bite of a banana for lunch.

Basically what happens is that in Scenario #1 (what I did), after about 24 hours your body realizes it isn't going to be getting any food (for whatever reason) and it just hunkers down. Your metabolism slows to a crawl and you start turning to fat, muscle, and other sources of stored energy instead of utilizing energy from food currently being digested. In Scenario #2, Charles explains that your body is constantly being given small amounts of food to digest. This forces it to continuously be switching metabolic pathways from a highly catabolic state to an increase in metabolism to utilize that energy as soon as possible. You end up confusing your body by cutting it short of its energy needs, but still taunting it with some small morsels of food. It is a highly mental side effect though, essentially toying with your desires.

I didn't notice many side effects (besides hunger, ha ha). The two primary ones I did notice was temperature and emotional control. In short, I got cold. Really, really, cold. Like, “two pairs of pants, a t-shirt, a zip up hoodie, a sweat shirt, a jacket, and a comforter wrapped around me” cold. Not all the time, and that was definitely the worst time, but I did get cold a lot easier, more often, and more intensely than everyone else around me. It didn't help that during my fast was the first really big cold spell in Rochester. Poor timing, I suppose. The other side effect was a some loss of emotional control. Especially towards the end of the second day and the third day, I started getting a bit short and snarky with people. Some events took place Friday morning that left me pretty depressed, but after a few days of food in my stomach I felt a bit more stable. I don't think I would have taken it so poorly had I been eating.

It may have taken me a while to write this post, but I did talk to a few people about the experience once I had finished. My friend Courtney told me about something she did once – she went into the woods, by herself, with only water, a tarp, a sleeping bag, and a candle. She fasted for 48 hours while completely alone. I would like to do some modification of this, perhaps this summer. Get enough water for 5 days and some material to protect me from the elements. Probably some method of starting a fire. I'd go into the woods, alone, far enough where I wouldn't come across anyone, and then just stay there until I felt it was time to come out. The one thing I didn't experience during my fast was focus. I was very distracted by a lot of different things, especially during the third day. Sitting, with absolutely nothing to distract me, for an indeterminate amount of time, sounds like a very different, almost spiritual, experience to me.

I'll let you know when I do this. In the mean time, I definitely learned a lot from this experience. Technique is obviously a very important part of parkour training, but I feel like to be a complete and well rounded traceur you should strive to experience as much as you can. I plan on doing a few other types of deprivation training over the next few months, so look out for those posts.

Rochester Parkour Website

Interest in Parkour at RIT is exploding.

We are not a school sponsored club, although we are working on it, but through grassroots advertising and word of mouth alone, the size of our regular meetings has doubled since last spring. This explosion in popularity is not just limited to RIT however. I have been in contact with many people from University of Rochester, Monroe Community College, and people from around the city.

In an effort to expand awareness of Parkour even more, I have decided to launch a new website, www.RochesterParkour.com

This website will serve as the central hub for all Parkour activities in the Rochester, New York area. We are not a team or a clan, we are simply a community. This website will function as a way to promote Parkour in Rochester, and to direct people who might be interested, but are unsure of where to start, to willing and able teachers. It will be a single website where they can read articles, look at pictures, and watch videos all relevant to the Rochester area. There will be information about workshops and classes being offered, as well as regular training times and locations.

The site is still new, and things will be constantly added. Soon I will be adding an "Articles" section, as well as "Quotes" and a link to our pictures, hosted on Flickr.

In addition to hosting content for the Rochester community, the site links to other valuable resources such as American Parkour, blogs of local and high-profile traceurs (someone who trains Parkour), and other websites.

My hope is that this new site will spark even more interest in Parkour in the Rochester area, and will help people train in a safe and responsible manner.

Philly (And NYC and RIT) Sampler

I'm going to come out with a longer Sampler in a few weeks, once I get some more footage. Probably end of November. But for now, these are clips mostly from Philly, but one from NYC and one from Rochester. I just put some recent clips together to show people more easily than giving them 15 download links.



Youtube link