Day 70: I Won't Make Promises That I Can't Keep

Today I am keeping a promise. Back during our first week of PCP, Patrick told me to make a promise to myself to go back and look at the posts for Days 7, 8, 9 when I hit Day 70.

It's now Day 70. I remembered.

On Day 7 I was on vacation and we were just about to complete our first week on PCP. As I wrote then:

Today started out with me having a minor heart attack when I realized that the number of jumps really increased from the previous day. Then I had a second minor heart attack trying to complete them.

The Implement of Torture jump rope does not play very well with my body. Right now I can barely do fifty jumps without tripping and then having to take a break so I can stop wheezing. But so far, doing fifty at a time helps. (Then, every time I hit a hundred mark I gave myself the proverbial pat on the back for just surviving!)

Day 8 found me packing camp and on the road, so there wasn't much PCP happening then. Day 9 continued the theme:

This afternoon I managed to do the Day 8 exercises. Yeah, I'm one day behind. Although I did manage to get the Implement of Torture jump rope to cooperate a bit. Two sets of fifty jumps without a single trip (not counting the obligatory wheeze-fest in between the sets). I also discovered that the flat, paved surface of the driveway made it a lot easier than the muddy, grassy uneven hillside I had been using during the week prior.

Then I alternated between the Implement of Torture jump rope and the other exercises. One hundred jumps, sixty-eight squats, one hundred jumps, eighteen incline pull-ups, one hundred jumps, forty-four push-ups, etc. Mixing it up a bit kept it from being dull and repetitious (although my legs still balked at the idea of having to do "only fifty more jumps" during the entire session).

I remember those days so well, and yet at the same time it feels like a lifetime ago. In between so much has changed.

The Implement of Torture my first jumprope met a grisly doom about a day after that post. It was definitely not a good rope. I would highly advise anyone against getting one of those cotton j-ropes—there's too much drag with them. My second j-rope was better, but still kept breaking (and getting repaired) until one day there was no fixing it. J-Rope Mach III (which is a Nike Speed Rope) has served me well for quite some time. It was a little more expensive than the first two, but well worth the price!

It's amazing to see how far I've come since those early days. The jumps felt like killers back then. My lungs would burn, I couldn't catch my breath, and I would be sweating like a pig. Each day I'd wonder how the hell I would survive all 90 days of the program. Sometimes it just required herculean effort to do it, all-the-while praying that I'd get to live for another day.

And here we are at Day 70. I've not only survived, but thrived! The j-rope is no longer the torture device I use to view it. If anything, it's the exercise that I look forward to each day. The wheezing and the lung burning are a thing of the past. I'm in far better shape than I was. What seemed like long arduous months to go are now viewed as having passed in a twinkling of an eye with a sort of sad fondness. Odd how the mind plays games like that.