300

For the past 3 weeks, I've been playing a game. Every day, I try to get to 100 push ups consecutively. I started out at 50 in a row, and I tacked on an additional 5 every day or so.

55, 65, 70, 75, 80, etc...

I count the push ups in my head to conserve energy. And I usually divide everything into sets of 10, so I don't get overwhelmed by the numbers, like this:

1,2,3,4,5,6,7,8,9, 10
1,2,3,4,5,6,7,8,9, 20
1,2,3,4,5,6,7,8,9, 30
etc.

Tonight, I got up to 99 push ups in a row. Or 99.5 if you count my half push up at the end. haha.
I think that subconsciously I didn't want to hit 100 yet, so that I can play the game again tomorrow. Ha.

I told my neighbor Carl about it. And he said he's been doing push ups everyday too. Pretty funny coincidence. Actually, he told me he read my gchat status the other day when I proudly posted that I got up to 75 push ups in a row, and he started doing them too. He got up to 80 non stop tonight.

Carl said that 100 consecutive push ups is not that many, and that we should be able to do at least 300 in row. He challenged me to get to 300 push ups continuously by this December. He'll do it too. So that gives us roughly 5 weeks. We'd have to tack on about 10 push ups every day or 2.

300, huh? At first I thought, "Wow. 300 sounds like a lot!" But Carl put it in perspective by showing me the World Records for push ups:

• non-stop: 10,507; Minoru Yoshida (JAP), Oct 1980
• one year: 1,500,230; Paddy Doyle (GBR), Oct 1988 - Oct 1989
• 24 hours: 46,001; Charles Servizio (USA), 24/25 April 1993 at Hesperia
  (new record claim, not yet verified: Jeffrey Warrick (USA), 46300)
• 1 hour: 3,877; Bijender Singh (IND), 20 Sept 1988
  
• 30 minutes: 2,354; Rolf Heck (GER), 13 Nov 2000
• 10 minutes (women): 426; Renata Hamplová (TCH), Rekord-Klub SAXONIA Record Festival in Schwedt, 2 Sept 1995
• 5 minutes: 441; Giuseppe Cusano (GBR), Loftus Road Soccer Stadium at the Fulham v. Portsmouth game on 24 Nov 2003
• 3 minutes (women): 190; Renata Hamplová (TCH), Record Festival Pelhrimov 1995

Ok. 300 is nothing.

Let's GO.


EDIT:
Push Up Log.

October 20, 2008 - 99 push ups
October 21, 2008 - 106 push ups
October 22, 2008 - 115 push ups
October 23, 2008 - 131 push ups
October 28, 2008 - 152 push ups
October 31, 2008 - 150 push ups
November 4, 2008 - 153 push ups
November 6, 2008 - 155 push ups

Hmmm. I seem to be getting stuck around 150. I need to figure out a new approach to this.
Getting drunk every other night of election week probably isn't helping much either.