I finally did it! I managed to do 2,500 jumps in 15 minutes! Goal achieved!
This is a far cry from where I started way back in August of last year when I began the Peak Condition Project. On Day 1 of the program, I had to do five sets of 50 jumps. I was lucky if I could do 5 jumps without the Implement of Torture jumprope tripping me. By the time I had completed the whole 250 jumps, I was red-faced, wheezing, and pretty certain I was going to drop dead.
Almost each day afterward there would be an increase in the number of jumps that had to be accomplished. I huffed and puffed and sweated through each routine. I suffered through extreme knee pain and minor foot surgery. By mid-point in the project, I was up to 1,500 jumps. It may have taken me at least a half-hour with breaks every 100 jumps, but I did it. Then the routine switched to timed jumps.
First it was seven sets of 2-minute jumps. Then it increased to six sets of 3-minute jumps. By the end of the program it was up to two sets of 9-minute jumps. The grand finale was when Patrick mentioned that I should keep jumping either 10-minutes or 1,500 jumps—my choice. Shortly thereafter I got the maintenance program sheets and each day it listed 15-minutes of jumprope. If one could do 1,500 jumps in a 10-minute period, how many jumps in 15?
My first attempts at this standard weren’t exactly the best. 1,500 jumps took me quite a bit longer than 10-minutes. Not as long as the half-hour during mid-program and certainly with less breaks, but still more than 10-minutes. I kept jumping.
Eventually I was able to accomplish 100 jumps per minute with just a tiny little break in between. That was 1,500 jumps in 15-minutes. But Patrick had say 1,500 jumps or 10-minutes. That meant I still had to push a bit more.
I slowly grew into doing the jumps in groups of 200, then 300, and eventually 500 with little break inbetween sets. My 1,500 jumps began drawing closer to the 10-minute time period with somewhere between 2,000 and 2,300 jumps in 15-minutes, depending on whether or not I took short 10-second breaks between the 500′s. (Yes, I was managing to do 15-minutes without any breaks. It just depended on how energetic my legs felt that day.)
I don’t know how it started, but somehow I figured that if I could do 1,500 jumps in 10-minutes that I should be able to do 2,500 jumps in 15-minutes. That became the next challenge.
Periodically I would reach the 1,500/10-minute mark, but I would always fall short of the 2,500/15-minute mark. Then there was the moment when I hit the 2,400/15-minute mark. The 2,500 goal was so close I could taste it. Little did I know, though, that it would evade me over a month.
That is, until today. 2,500 jumps in 15-minutes without a break. I totally rocked it, baby!
