Hey all! Well, I'm 47, so yep, I can post here!
I am one of the rare ones here that really has very little experience at being active all through my life. You see, waaaay back in the late 70's, I got into computer programming. Talk about an inactive job! It got worse, as back then, computers wern't as "cool" as they are now, LOL, so the only people who had them were us geeks. So ALL my friends were also guys who would rather stay inside and play video games instead of going outside. However, I seemed to always want to be outside, (I think being a boy scout and camping helped fuel that) so I started going into my back yard and climbing the tree. I spent an inordinate amount of time climbing around in that thing. My dad tried to get my into sports, but I just despised them! They were soooo boring.
So, fast forward to last year. (Dec 2009) I have tried many times to work out, and improve myself, and have never been able to stick with it. I am what bodybuilders call an Ectomorph, meaning I'm 5'9, and only weigh 150 lbs, but can eat the planet. It's also very frustrating to gain muscle. So, in Dec, I finally said enough is enough, and have actually been eating better, working out, and sticking with it. Now, arrive at last week... I'm goofing off on the computer watching old 80's artists on YouTube, (I know, I know... but I like new music too, honest!) When I came across the video for 'Jump' by Madonna. Now, I had seen Parkour/Freerunning before, but had never known what it was called. It had always intrigued me, but I never paid a lot of attention to it for some reason. This time, however, it was like the last piece of a puzzle just snapped into place! But, I still didn't know what it was called!!! It took about 3 hours of randomly typing in things like "jumping off stuff" in google before I finally came across the word Parkour. This was roughly at about 10 pm. I was up until 2:30 am watching videos, mesmerized, before I fianally had to force myself to go to bed.
The mext morning I signed up with MissouriParkour, which led me here.
I am lucky, in that my body has not been beat up, and I'm still fairly limber, but I know I have a long way to go. I really am young at heart, and my friends all think I'm still a kid. I go camping, I go off-roading, I'm a scuba diver, etc. I know I will probably never be able to do half the things the teenagers I will be running with do, but that is just fine. I will still be able to do 1000 times more than almost everyone else my age!
And I don't care that other people will look at me funny when I'm doing this. If they can't see it for what it is, then that is their loss!
