Stairs every Wednesday!

So we decided to start doing the wooden river valley stairs each Wednesday.  I have yet to find the ones closest to us (Capilano), so we just drive each week somewhere downtown to do a stair workout. 

Our first week, we followed a schedule of sprints, lunges, high knees, squats, and sets of stairs.  At the end we ran a huge, steep hill as well.  Needless to say, our calves were killing us for 2-3 days following!  This was only our second week, but it has been great working out together.  It was challenging both times and fun to do together!  This week we tried a new set of stairs, and they are much longer than the ones we did last week.  We also ran across the high level bridge and back on the blue LRT bridge (yes, Nathan ran too! 5 and 10k, here we come!), and I ran a few hills by the legislature at the end for my run training.  We decided that this set of stairs by the fancy, expensive Glenora gym and the blue LRT bridge would our "home stairs".  I looked it up, 202 stairs?!  Didn't seem quite that bad, but that would explain feeling like I was breathing through a straw and not being able to walk the whole set at once, let alone run them.  I feel incredibly out of shape suddenly.  Nathan was way better at it, I was so jealous!  Hoping to improve in weeks to come.

We were not nearly as sore this time...maybe it was the lack of small circuit training exercises?  Not sure, but I kind of liked the horrible soreness for days following, made it feel like we did something awfully good to our muscles without even realizing it at the time.  I think everyone should take an hour every week or so to incorporate stairs into their training!  I've heard this helps with my hill running abilities too.