Speed Work:Work Day

Training and being a nurse requires creativity. I’m coming to appreciate that more and more. This week though, I’m worried I may have crossed a threshold between Creativity and CraZy.

At least once a week I get up at 0425 to go catch a run down town. I run with a pack of badass mother (runn)ers who charge through the city like they’re being  chased by a bear.

But really they’re just being chased by me, because I am dead ass last.  Which is really a little cruel because I was running a 7something the other day and still f’ing dead ass last.

That said, I’m getting faster and part of that I attribute to my creativity in training.

~hypoxia – the birthplace of innovation and creativity ~

Y’all know that I started using the stairs exclusively in December of last year in an effort to strengthen my glutes? Well, some of my coworkers are also embracing the stairs...  only my “one to two flights a day” and sometimes “a random timed sprint” wasn’t enough for them. They started skipping lunches, or taking about 3 minutes every hour (it’s literally three minutes total) to walk down to Ground level and do lunges up to level 6.

Over this weekend we went up another level, and found that we were huffing about 4 - 6 flights in the course of a day.  It’s reasonably easy to leave your patients in the care of another nurse for 3 minutes so you can hit the stairs at the top of the hour, and my coworkers are a bunch of  badasses who think that’s a genius idea.

Add those stairs to the 5-7 miles of walking during our regular job, and you quickly realize that these intervals are becoming a legit workout.

So let me clarify that the bada**es I work with are FREAKING galactic.

And late in this week... “the ante” was severely “upped”.

One of my corworkers in particular, The Gazelle, took the pride I expressed in my badass time of 57.3 seconds for 12 flights of stairs as a challenge. She is literally one of the most graceful people I've met. 

Me next to her is like...

Me.

My Co-Workers on the stairs

well. 

basically...

imagine a footrace between a Gazelle versus Barney Rubble?

That's us.

“Gauntlet Down”, she said.

And so, the 6 foot tall beauty I work with set about kicking my a**.

And she did. She beat my personal best by 4 seconds.

FOUR.

I did not imagine shaving off four seconds, but because I am an idiot who can be baited into almost anything athletic, especially by a younger hotter woman, I went ahead and asked her to sprint with me.  I knew I could not beat her, but I hoped like hell that if I used her for a rabbit I would run faster.

And I imagined that if she had me chasing her, she would run faster too.

So... at the beginning of our lunch break we walked down to the ground floor and waited until we heard no one else on the stairs.

It was quiet. We were giggling a little at our ridiculousness. Because let’s be clear. This was level 10 ridiculousness.

And it was epic.

On your mark... that was the longest 12 flights of stairs in my life... I wanted to die. When I got to the top my legs were shaking and I leaned against a wall. And then sat on the stairs. And saw spots...

We made some CODE BLUE jokes.

And I chuckled because I have never felt closer to having a Code called on me than I did in that moment... or I would have chuckled, but I couldn’t breath. Or move. Or think.

But aside from all that, it was wicked fun. ~craZy~

I did not take off 4 seconds. I took off 7.3 seconds. 

Of course, what happened next is exactly what you’re all imagining. I was still gasping (with pleasure?) from an intense 50 seconds when I rounded on my patients... And a family member wanted a complete explanation of Acute Kidney Failure... or something like that...  

uh

“Well...(gasp).... the physiology (breathe Ginny breathe) of the Kidney (*air*) is built around (omg) the idea ...” and so on and so forth. Eventually my heart rate normalized and I wasn’t shaking anymore and I was able to give him a solid answer.

And he didn’t seem bothered at all that his family member’s nurse was a bit, shall we say, breathy?

For the record let me be clear – my companions smoked me and ran it in :42...

And you know what I’m thinking?  I’m thinking that my work day speed work is a legit.  Yes, it’s 4 minutes of intense cardio in 13 hours, but it’s a well needed mental break, a blast of endorphins, and if nothing else, my HR is elevated for 10 minutes an hour for 4 hours a day.

50 seconds is going to be hard to beat. I will have to work hard to get a new PR.  And I WILL work hard to get a new PR, even though I know that when I’m racing the Gazelle I will STILL be dead ass last.

~savor the run~