I was a dark and stormy night.  Only not really.  But it was a dark night after a long day at work in what has been a very long week at work.  So I got home, determined to run 6 miles.  Right. 

The real problem is that I would rather do any household chore than run after a long day.  I would really rather iron and clean the bathroom and mop than run a few miles.  There’s just something sad about leaving the house right after you got there.  And you aren’t leaving the house to talk to fun people or eat good food or any of the usual inducements.  You’re leaving to be alone in the cold and feel bad about your athleticism. 

No thank you, right?!

But I’m feebly training for a half marathon right now, so not working out isn’t an option for the timebeing.  That’s a shame.

I couldn’t bring myself to run last night, so I decided I would jump rope for an hour as a substitute.  When I was in college, one of my roommates and I would have jump rope competitions to see who could do the most consecutive jumps without messing up.  If my memory is correct, we usually topped out around 300 consecutive jumps, and we had a blast.  We were probably the dorkiest freshman around, but we were darn happy with our random entertainment.

Not the case last night.  Jumping rope was great for a while, and I did get to 107 jumps in the first few minutes.  I had lots of 78 and 64 jumps, too.  But then it petered out to 20 and 30 consecutive jumps with a few 4 and 5 and 9 sets in there.  Eventually, I had to switch up the way I was jumping to make myself keep going.

Did you know that you’re naturally inclined to always start jumping rope with the same foot?  And moreover, your first foot/leg does a very different motion than the second foot/leg.  So my left calf is super sore, and my right knee hates me.  Interesting.

I figured out the different motion for different feet thing about half an hour in, and that’s when I started switching things up more.  I’m glad to say that by the end of the hour, I was almost as good starting with my right foot as I was at the beginning of the night starting with my left foot.  Almost.  And I’m better at jumping with both feet at the same time, but that takes a lot out of you. 

So there we are.  My little workout experiment semi-successful.  It did make me workout, but my body wasn’t a fan of the continual jumping.  Hopefully a good old-fashioned run will return everything to normal tonight.