Steps, Steps, and More Steps!

On the last post, I was describing the Seton Hill Drive workout I was supposed to do at 4 oclock that day for practice. A few hours before practice, the weather was not looking promising. Altought we didn't get the eight inches of snow that my hometown got, we did get the freezing rain. The freezing rain raised my hopes that the Seton Hill Drive workout wasn't going to happen. It wouldn't have been too bad coming up the hill, but having to go down the hill would have been treacherous. So there was a rumor that if the weather didn't cooperate, we would be doing stairs. So before heading over to practice, I packed a pair of shorts, just in case!

When I arrived, I was talking to some of my teammates about how the sidewalks were very slick and I lost my balance a few times of the way over. They were very hopeful that this workout wasn't happening. Then, the coaches showed up, giving us a choice. We could attempt the hill workout, or settle for doing steps in the Administration building. While we contemplated the choices, our coach said that we would get a better workout with the steps instead of doing hills. Before deciding, I asked how many sets of stairs we would have to do. He informed me that we would have to double the number of hills we would have done, so that meant 14 sets of stairs. To explain the stairs, the sets would consist of us running up from the first floor, to the fifth floor. This also consists of about 12 flights of steps, give or take a few. This would be tough. I am usually tired walking up the stairs from second floor to the fourth floor. Eventually we decided that steps would be our fate. And we were off to get changed, warm up, and start the step workout.

While we were stretching after our warmup, our graduate assistant Hanna told us that we would alternate the way in which we would go up the stairs. Every other set would alternate between stepping on each step, and then skipping a step. As we got started, it didn't seem too bad. I was used to doing step workouts in high school so I think this helped. I also soon realized that I had an advantage with my long legs when we skipped a step and soon I was leading this workout. We stopped halfway through to get a quick drink and then we started up again. For our recovery, the girls chose to run down the other set of stairs, while the boys took the elevator(which was oddly the assistant coach's idea). When we finally ended the workout, our legs were shaky and we were out of breath. But it was a tough workout and ALOT better than the hill workout. Unfortunately, a little after we finished, me and my teammates could already feel the soreness setting in, which would last for a few days I would soon find out!