Day 50: Well There's Nothing To Lose And Nothing To Prove I'll Be Dancing With Myself

I am so liking timed jumps! No more having to count each and every jump until I get to some astronomical number—although the accomplished feat would impress my friends. "You did how many jumps?!?"

Okay, even though I was looking forward it, on the first day I wasn't so thrilled with the timed thing. When you read it on paper, two minutes doesn't seem like a long time—that is until you start jumping. Then it can feel like forever.

So today I started to play around with it a bit and try out some new jump rope moves. These are things I could never do during the previous weeks because I had been concentrating quite hard on remembering the jump number I was on. ("Was this jump number eighty-five or eighty-six?") When it's timed, you don't need to concentrate on the number of jumps you're doing—you just gotta jump!

I tried to double jump (where you put in an extra hop just before jumping the rope), and hopping on just the right foot, then hopping on the left foot, hopping side to side, hopping in a circle (unsuccessfully, though I did make a quarter turn), and even trying a front cross.

(A word to the wise: make sure you're away from anything breakable when doing the front cross. When you cross your arms, the rope is a little bit longer than you think. I wiped out my counting stones that I had set on the mantle when I tried it the first time. Sent them flying all over the room. Who knew that you could get shrapnel from jumping rope?!?)

Playing around with different jump moves really made the time fly! Before I knew it, two minutes was up and I couldn't wait to start on the next set of two minutes so I could play again! (I'm not sure how long a break there is suppose to be between the two minute sets. I usually began the next one in about 30 seconds after the last one.)

That was a lot of fun and I can't wait to do it again! In the meantime, here are a couple of guys with mad jump rope skills.