500 push-ups in one day challenge

The challenge details are on the tribesports website:

Perform 500 push-ups in a day

After an extremely lame attempt at completing this challenge last Tuesday, I decided to have another crack at it on a day where work wouldn't get in my way.

I started at 11am and worked out that if I stuck to an average of 50 push-ups per hour for the rest of the day, I would be done just before I hit the sack (albeit with burning chest, triceps and shoulders!). Here is how it went:

11:10 - 11:18: 5 sets of 10 (regular).

We then had to go out to the shops to buy food.

13:26 - 13:29: 5 sets of 10 (with pushup bars).
14:58 - 14:59: 1 set of 20 (with pushup bars).
15:14 - 15:16: 3 sets of 10 (with pushup bars).
15:50 - 15:56: 5 sets of 10 (regular with feet raised).
15:59 - 16:05: 5 sets of 10 (with pushup bars).

Half way point!

17:07 - 17:13: 5 sets of 10 (arms wide).
18:01 - 18:10: 2 sets of 25 (regular)

That took me up to 350. Time for a longer break while I had dinner. After eating approximately 1kg of roast potatoes and an awesome salad (rocket, spinach, watercress, basil) my body started to feel sleepy. I got down into the push-up position but my arms would not push me up. I gave myself a stern talking to 'you will not come this far and then quit!'. After that I tried again..

19:55 - 20:02: 5 sets of 10 (regular).

400 pushups done, but my right shoulder was feeling a bit tender (maybe due to the extra potato weight it was lifting).

20:40 - 20:45: 5 sets of 10 (regular). The last two reps of the last set were really hard.

The last session..

20:55 - 21:03 5 sets of 10 (regular) - Plus one extra push-up at the end for luck!

500+1 push-ups complete!

7t.

The last one (Janathon day 31)

The last day of Janathon. My working title for this post was 'thank f*ck it's over'. However, now we are at the end, I don't think that title really sums up how I feel. Somehow it feels like the beginning rather than the end. However, I am quite glad that the daily blogging can end, most of the posts end up sounding the same and sometimes feel like a chore to write.

check out the runart blog for more janathon collages

I thought it would be good to end with a challenge from tribesports that I could attempt to complete throughout the course of the day.

The challenge was to perform 500 push-ups in one day.

By 9am I had completed 50 push-ups. Only 450 to go... (yay).

At lunch time I went for a run around St. James's Park. That went pretty well. I didn't have enough time to do any more push-ups so I went back to work with my total number of push-ups still standing at 50 - Not a good sign.

There was no opportunity to do any push-ups in the office during the afternoon so I left work with the huge task of completing 450 push-ups during the evening which was just too daunting so I gave up - I think this is a challenge for a day when I'm not at work.

I've really enjoyed the experience of Janathon, and have found lots of new blogs to read. The highlight for me was coming together of the ten runartists to create the janathon collages. Visit the #runart blog to see some variations on the collage above.

4.1km (21 minutes)
50 push-ups

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End of Janathon stats:

Distance run: 166 Kilometres (103.1 Miles)
Time spent running: 14 hours and 58 minutes
Number of runs logged: 34