Day Seventeen: The Climb

Bumped up my jumpropes to sets of 200, now that we are at 850 per day. I either rock it or I trip every 20 or so, usually when my calves, ankles or wrists start to fatigue. Cursing abounds. I also can rock inclined pull-ups but not even one iota of strength to do a regular pull-up. Dang. Once, when I was in high school gym class while us girls made lame attempts to play volleyball, the boys were showing off by climbing up this rope attached to the ceiling of the gym.

Like young apes they shimmied up, hooted and hollered at the top, and high-fived their friends once back on the gym mat. As a tomboy not wanting to be outdone, I wanted to see if I could do it. I felt pretty strong. I worked at a restaurant back near Scranton lugging tubs of dirty dishes to the kitchen and kegs to the bar. I played two sports involving lots of arm strength. The boys elbowed and murmured as I took the rope. Our crusty ol' Catholic high school gym teacher even stopped to watch. And then I did it. Not saying it was graceful or well-timed, but I got to the top, touched the ceiling, and then got rope burns on my thighs on the way down. Gym Teacher even patted me on the back with an "Atta girl!" And approximately 10+ years later doing that now seems impossible because this morning this was the memory that blazed into my head as I hung from a monkey bar and couldn't even move up for one pull-up. But I did it once upon a time without even trying to be in shape; it was just because I had youth and manual labor on my side (think wax on, wax off). So I keep thinking "Imagine what I could do if I actually tried to have that kind of strength on purpose?"