The American Parkour scene is starting off strong this summer.  First (B)East coast with a record of over 120 people, and now Colossal with 147 Traceurs!  Each year the numbers keep growing and who knows when they will reach a limit.  Aero hosted its first national jam in 2006 with 30 people… 

With the majority of the out of town traceurs coming in Thursday night; Friday started off with a taste of a local pancake house which soon lead to an impromptu tricking session outside of a Trader Joe’s…   The official welcome and night training session kicked off at 7:30pm in a local park with introductions and a rail balancing challenge to begin the night with.  Training lasted until around 10:00 or so with Cloud and Fresh getting all the out of town guys places to sleep.  Some choose to stay up into the hours of the morning, while others tried to maximize on their sleep knowing full well that an 8 hour jam was about to commence….

The day started off with poor weather reports and all signs pointed to rain.  Rain or shine Colossal was going to happen, and luckily the clouds decided to hold back.  The jam was ideally starting at 10am over at University of Illinois Chicago, but unfortunately Cloud showed up to his own jam 30 minutes late…  Introductions were in order and the teachers for the day were introduced.  Frosti and Jake Carlson went over rolls and landings, Leon went over precisions, Cody Beltramo and Syn worked on flown and putting movements together, Chris Price and Spyder (Chris Wachtman) went over Climb ups, and Cloud and Mike Metze taught vault fundamentals.  The day started off great with everyone training and almost no problems.  Ryan Thill (a local) pulled of a nice tac to wall run, and after an hour or two we gathered in the Quad and began some more workshops and general jamming.  Crain Tutorials, Wall Smash techniques, PDQ, Circle pushups, and more general awesomeness continued for a few more hours.  Logan from Colorado and Syn pulled off a massive Kong to precision that many instantly doubted when judging the distance.  Around 1pm we took a group photo and broke for lunch.  Thai Bowl has never seen so many customers…..  Around 2pm we all left to head downtown for the second half of the jam.

A quick hop on the train and by the time we arrived at Vietnam Memorial our numbers had increased.  Everyone was already in full swing with Cats on the right and Wall runs on the left.  Cory from Team Pandora started off the wall run session nailing a massive 16 foot wall run…  The rest of the day many others tested the wall as well.  The massive Kong to Precision was revisited by Leonn and Chad Zwadlo.  Security came shortly later and politely told us to stay off the walls, we finished up our session and headed down the Chicago River to hit up a few spots along the River Front.  Some more jamming and new spots were discovered, while we pressed on for the beach.

Once we arrived at Navy pier most were exhausted and already pushing 6 hours of colossalawesomeness…    A large group of us still continued to push on and turned the beach into a nice tricking session.  There was a nice ledge off to the side for various interpretations of how we like to manipulate our center of gravity.  Finally, the sun was setting on the Colossal Jam, and 95 percent of the practitioners were wiped.  So it was time to call in the big guns…  Muse of Fire was our special guest from Madison and she was happy to lead a stretching session to finish the day with.  Last minute housing was figured out and we all headed home for some Chicago deep dish pizza.  It was glorious and we headed to bed early enough to try and recharge whatever we could for the next day of the Jam. 

Sunday started off with Cloud and his group getting lost and showing up 2 hours late again…..  The Dunes jam was already in full swing and by the time we got there, I could easily spot Traceurs climbing the sand dunes in the distance.  They aren’t your typical dunes, these had sections that acted has platforms to jump off of.  The landings ranged from a story or two with a drop into the softest sand you could possibly imagine.   You could literally run as fast as you could on top of the dunes and try to jump as far as possible with no worries.  Cloud took a hilarious fall that resulted in him rolling multiple times down the side of the dune due to a missed step right before takeoff.  The day was cool and the water was a pleasant temperature after a long day of training.  After a long day of training in the sand everyone was parched and with one less car (decided to breakdown) we called it quits and headed back home.  The last few stayed at my house for one last night and headed home the next day.  All in all 147 practitioners dominated Chicago and helped make it a truly epic jam of the summer.

The Chicago Colossal Jam is an annual event held by Aero. Once a year, Aero invites all traceurs from around the nation; west, midwest, and east, to come out to the city for a weekend of nonstop Parkour and Freerunning training.

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