sponsored skip. can anyone help????

right i'm gonna be doing a three hour long sponored skip for charity around june and any advice any one can offer would be awesome. dont need any help with the fund raising shizal as i've done quite a few of these sponsored things now. but i think this skipping one is going to be harder than i first thought. basically an hour is the longest i have skipped before and that was a killer. it was at mixed tempo's so on the day i do this i wont be going at that pace to save my batteries a bit. i had a skip today for half an hour just to gain an idea of where about i am with regard as to being able to skip for three hours straight and i definately think i need to train a bit.
has anyone done anything like this before or skipped for any long periods of time? any advice on how to prepare myself for this? my deltoids (shoulders) tend to begin to ache before anything else but after that it has to be my calf's and my shins.
obviously with it being june when i am going to do this i will be stopping for swigs of water here and there but i basically want to complete it without really stopping. any help would be awesome guys and i'll keep you updated as to how my training is going. over and out.

Jbirdy, Mate Good Luck thats so hard I cant see you doing it almost impossible Id say. Isolation and posture makes it unlikely. Its harder than doing a double marothon, let me know when Ill put a few qiud in for trying.

Maybe train for it the same way you might if you were building up running distance perhaps?

So you can do 30 mins hard no worries and 1 hour easy now and you have about 6 weeks left you might do something like the following. Take Thursdays and Sundays off any skipping. Still it's not much time for the gradual no more than 10 % increase that would normally be recommended.

I think shock to the joints is likely to be the biggest killer. I've done long distance bike rides without much preparation and felt OK (although I'm a transport cyclist - but don't hold that against me!) and 12 hour canoe marathon and felt OK but throw in running with a bit more shock (although also more competitive) and it hurts. Maybe focus on landing lightly especially if you're a big guy? Check that the surface you are skipping on is safe too.

A lot of people are defeated when doing long distance running by their own heads too. A mental strategy to keep you going might help. Like music and conversation. Now I'm used to endurance stuff I love to zone out and think about pretty much everything and it's part of my stress relief but until you are used to it the boredom might have you making it harder for yourself and feeling more tired than you really are.

Also I'm not sure how your shoulders will go. It's a bit impossible to prepare with such little time in a way that's not going to hurt and can guarantee no injuries. Maybe do lots of stretching? Where it says w/up I would skip slow so it's still continuous 30 mins but might want to do some sort of pre-skip warm up and stretch too perhaps? Still stretch on off days too. Good luck :-)

Monday                  Tuesday
easy 30 mins      fast intervals short session
week 1 v slow 30 mins   10 min w/up 1 min at 3/4 pace, 1 min easy X 5, cool down
week 2 v slow 30 mins   10 min w/up 1.5 min at 3/4 pace, 1 min easy X 4, cool down
week 3 v slow 30 mins   10 min w/up 2 min at 3/4 pace, 1 min easy X 3, cool down
week 4 v slow 30 mins   10 min w/up 1.5 min at 3/4 pace, 1 min easy X 4, cool down
week 5 v slow 30 mins   10 min w/up 2 min at 3/4 pace, 1 min easy X 3, cool down
week 6 Easy week - no sessions longer than 1 hour

Wednesday                       Friday                                                          Saturday
steady skip fast intervals short session                                                 long
40 min        10 min w/up 30 sec hard, 1min easy X 5, easy 5 min cool down 1 hour
1hr 10 min       10 min w/up 30 sec hard, 40 sec easy X 5, easy 6 min cool down 1.5 hr
40 min        10 min w/up 30 sec hard, 30 sec easy X 10, easy 5 min cool down 1.5 hr
1 hr 30        10 min w/up 30 sec hard, 30 sec easy X 10, easy 5 min cool down 2 hr
1 hr 10        10 min w/up 30 sec hard, 30 sec easy X 10, easy 5 min cool down 2.5 hr

nice one guys. cheers sharla thats awesome. had another skip today and im thinking that i might be a bit of a pussy and change it to only 2 hours. can you beleive originaly when the whole conversation was mentioned in the pub a mate sugested 5 hours!!!! someone tells me that the world record for endurance skipping is about 31 hours or something mental like that :o
i cant back out of doing it now but i could change it to only 2 hours and just pretend to everyone that it was always 2 hours from the beggining and if anyone questions it i'll just ask them to skip for ten minutes and then kindly shut up ;D
plus another thing i noticed from todays skip is that my natural skipping rhythm is pretty quick and i find i keep messing up if i go any slower. weird??? im more of a sprinter than a distance runner and another thing that someone told me that is quite worrying is that 10 mins skipping is about the equivelant of half an hours running or something mad like that. anyways cheers again and i'll keep you all posted. over and out.

All good :-)

I think it's difficult to meaure what the equivalent of one exercise is to another because it depends on how fast you naturally tend to run compared to skip - but since you naturally skip fast you are right you might find it pretty intense.

I should mention that most people who train for the marathon won't do the full distance in training before. They'll train up to a bit over 3/4 of the total distance so if you get to the point where you can fully recover from 2.5 hrs wihtout soreness the next day maybe you'll be right for the full 3 hours?

If you do decide to reduce it to 2 hours you could mess around with the training program to reduce the increases to something safer.

Let us know how it's going :) What's the charity?

I done something like this before us lot had to skip for an hour for good cause it was when i was 12 when i was in my prime ;D so i didn't run out of breath actually after that i went to my running club and run for like hour and half damn i miss having that energy im still fit at 17 but you havent got the energy like you have at that age :(

right it's for wateraid and its defo gonna happen in mid june. im gonna aim to do it the week before the hatton vs castillo fight but all depends on how my sponsors are going i supose.
i've been skipping for half an hour everyday since thursday (except sunday when i was rough as fook) and its not going too bad. i skip better in the evening than i do in the morning but i've decided that as my natural skipping pace is quick it will be really tough to do 2 hours solid in midday june at that pace (i've also decided to do 2 hours instead of 3), so i need to get used to skipping slower than normally at a more jogging sort of pace. which for some reason is quite dificult and i keep catching my feet and fucking up.
i've also got a load of mates coming down to town at different points throughout the 2 hours to throw water at me so its gonna be more in jest than a serious 'dig deep' event. but i'm still gonna have to train for it cos 2 hours is a long time. i'll keep you updated.

damn jbirdy, u must be super fit dude....i can only skip hard for about 5 min max, so i just skip in 2 min rds times 6 rds.....i cant even imagine going at it for an hour let alone 3 hours...oh well, good luck anywayz ;D

All good jbirdy. One thought might be to mix it up a little by maybe doing 40 mins once a week and gradually making that session a little longer each week? Only need one long session and one moderately long session per week to increase endurance. It'll make your skip much more comfortable than going straight from 30 mins to 2 hours!