Skipping

Well today I tried something I haven't done since junior High. Those that know me, know that I swim fairly often...At least three times a week, usually four times. They probably don't know that I have been hitting the gym twice a week on top of that.
Today At the gym I saw the skipping station was empty. "That could be fun" I thought. So I picked up the rope and proceed with the idea that I would skip continuously for 1 minute. That shouldn't be hard, after all I bike for 30 or swim for 60 minutes. How hard can one minute of skipping be. As I started to jump I thought, "This is kind of fun, no wonder I did all the time when I was young." The seven seconds that passed for that thought, changed my opinion...By the end of the thought, I was in the mid set that this was tiring. "wow, this is getting hard." That was by 12 seconds. At 15 seconds I trained my head to count jumps, "I will jump 45 times and check the clock, that should bring me close to the end."
....."6, 7, 8...Oh my legs....9 10....Damn it." I had tripped on the roped. I looked at the clock to see that a grand total of 21 seconds had passed. So I tried to pick it up. 18 seconds this time...My legs hurt so bad. I stopped this time waited for about 15 seconds, then said...Okay one minute is for champs, I'll try 30 seconds.
I prepared to jump and I was off. I started counting skips. At 30 jumps, 9 seconds had passed, my lefts were aching and I could feel the lactic acid burning my veins, I jumped for additional 20 jumps, and a total of 17 seconds had passed...."My god has that clocked stopped....I thought this was suppose to be child's play." With 10 seconds left I was breathing hard and jumping very hard. My light gentle skips lost to the unwillingness of my legs to jump. Then as I thought I could not jump one more time the clock hit the 30 second mark. No wonder we stop skipping as we get older...Are legs would fall off if we continued. Does anyone's else remember playing jump rope for hours when they were 5,6 or 7?

This all happened in about 2 mintues and in that time I got a better work out than I have in the last months of swimming biking and weight lifting. I think tomorrow I will aim for 45 seconds of skipping.