24-R.8.1

Unit 8, Sports, Cage 106, Reading.

A. Paul.

When I was in Tunisia, I saw a couple of boys jumping and doing some unusual flips.

I asked them, What are you doing exactly?

They said, We are a group of four people.

We break dance and do parkour.

It sounded so exciting that I wanted to join them.

That's how I started doing parkour.

Parkour changed my way of thinking in life.

Now I feel like I am strong enough to overcome any obstacle I may face.

Parkour is a relatively new sport here where I live, so we are trying to introduce it to everyone.

We want to inspire as many people as we can because parkour is not only a sport but also a lifestyle.

You can do it even in your 50s or 60s.

Some people may think that parkour is easy, but they are wrong because it requires both physical

and mental effort.

You must work on every step so that you can understand whether you can succeed in that particular

step or not.

We fall many times, but it is a part of the sport.

By the way, parkour is different from free running.

Parkour is just jumping from aid to be without acrobatics.

However, free running is jumping from place to place with acrobatics.

Next month, our team is going to participate in a free running and parkour competition.

I hope we will be successful.

Be.

James.

I guess you have heard of wingsuit flying.

If not, it is an extreme sport similar to base jumping and skydiving.

With a special suit, you fly through the air rather than just falling.

Like most people, I started with skydiving and moved onto base jumping once I mastered skydiving.

Wingsuit flying is quite a popular sport, but it takes a lot of training to be able to do that sport.

A couple of years after I started wingsuit flying, I wanted to become the first person

to fly in and out of an active volcano, so I made the hardest decision of my life.

I chose the Valerica volcano in Chile as the side of my record.

It is an active volcano and one of the most dangerous ones in the country.

It last erupted in 2015.

It took months and months of research and practice.

I was worried that I couldn't get out of the volcano crater after I got in because of not being able to find clean air.

When the time came, I flew at speeds of over 180km per hour and descended around 10m into the volcano.

The feeling of going into the volcano was one of the scariest, most dangerous and weirdest things in my life.

Fortunately, everything went well and I could get out and break the record.

C.

Clark

Esowira, Africa, is one of the best places for kite surfers.

Every surfer should go there to experience more of surfing.

As I was interested in this sport, I went there too.

On my first morning in Africa's windiest city, I joined a group of people on the beach.

All the people in the group were there to have fun and learn how to kite surf.

There were also some others who were there to improve their kite surfing skills.

We spent the whole morning learning how to surf first.

We were in our wetsuits on our surfboards.

Our guide talked about the basics and showed us how to balance.

After struggling with the board and waves a couple of times, I finally managed to get up on the board and ride a wave.

Then it was time to do that with the kite.

During the intensive training session, we learned about the equipment, how to set up the kite and control it safely.

A few hours later, we were ready to fly the kite that was attached to our wastes by the safety harness.

I held my breath and waited for my turn.

And it happened.

I was up in the air flying.

To gain control over the kite, I held onto the bar gently though it was difficult to do so because of the wind.

Although my efforts resulted in crashing the kite many times, I was on the board with the wind blowing and the sea splashing on my face, gliding between the waves at last.

Since then, I have been to many other places to experience kite surfing.