Tuesday, January 22, 2008

stairway to heaven...



shredded... this is a word that likely and most adequately describes how my legs feel at this moment. today marks a new dawn into the world of g2 workouts... but first, let me start with a little background.
in the small rural town that i hail from far in the northern tundra of central wisconsin, there lack many things, however what exists there can be fully utilized to many advantages... going back... when i was in college, running for usc, i remember the first winter/christmas break when we were given workouts to do over this time period. i didn't think much of what the workouts were at the time, so i just grabbed the workout sheet and headed home. after looking thoroughly through the regimen laid out before me, juxtaposed to the weather laid out in front of my bitterly cold nose, i realized that such workouts were meant to be done in warmer climates... various sprints and tire pulls and things of that nature.
since these things were not available to me... but an ample amount of white snowy fluff was, improvisation was in order. i remember that instead of doing tire pulls i utilized my little sister, mur, instead.
that poor little girl. i hope that she thought it was fun because i remember having a blast.
what i wound up doing was attaching a sled to a rope and then tying that around my waist. arynn, of course, sat on the sled which took the place of the 'tire'. then i strapped into my boots and proceeded to pull her up the little hill of a street that my parents live on time and time again. she soon realized that it was much more enjoyable when she turned around so as to avoid the onslaught of snow kicked up into her face... it was like a nonstop facewash at first... like i said, poor little girl. nevertheless, what a wonderful memory to me that i hope never to forget.
anywho, while i was in the improvisation stage, i caught wind that one of the anesthesiologists at the hospital would run up and down the stairs in the back stairwell there at the hospital. since the hospital was pretty much the largest building in town, i figured that i could vary the stair workouts in the back stairwell to parallel the workouts i was supposed to accomplish. i think i ran more stairs that month that i had in my life... up and down in that clandestine location 3-4 days a week. heck, i remember kroll and i used to even run there on occasion. we would talk of 'jackrabbit legs' and things of that nature after such workouts. it was odd how we both wound up developing muscle twitches in our legs that seemed uncontrollable. it was a feeling like no other... brutally pleasureful!
this is the basis of my recent inspiration for doing something to shred my legs, so to speak... something that i have been missing since the days of williams-brice in sc. since i have always enjoyed running stairs, combined with a recent discovery [thanks to my fellow] as to the location of a stairwell fairly well 'under the radar' in ku's new heart hospital, the plans came together to go forth on an adventure in a stairway to workout heaven. with anticipation looming in my mind intermittently throughout the day, the moment finally came when i had a chance to leave work and head to that heavenly vertical corridor of miniature steps of altitude. so, there i was, peering at this stairwell, with a glimpse into the past in what hospital stairwells had done for me prior... to come to a clairvoyant state as to what this stairwell could do for me in shreddings yet to come...
shredded... as if this stairwell were the papershredder to my papyrus legs...
yep, 20 min up and down and up and down et cetera[roughly 155 steps up each time]... 11 times in total to be precise. i suppose now i have a base to build from and a new workout to try to improve upon. in the summer time i am not sure if this will do, however i tend to love it in the winter... far better than a stairmaster, which leaves me feeling somewhat static in the end. somehow... someway there emerges more of a feeling of accomplishment in that walled of concrete container of stacked sheer cliffs... 8 inches in height.
hopefully my panting and heavy breathing in this 'far off land' was far enough away so that it neither scared nor awoke the neighborhood. and i departed that little place in happyness... leaving my quads behind, to hopefully pick them up tomorrow lying were i left them... to be utilized again...
shredded...
hope all is well to those who read this,
love to all,
-g

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