Hospital Workout 2

The Workout:
fartlek - 1hr

I was feeling pretty good again last night and went out for another fartlek style workout. This time, I took 5 laps around the hospital campus. In the first lap, I identified several interesting areas and made up some basic drills or exercises to do there. On each successive lap, I would change the exercise a bit to keep them interesting. Once again, I treked (briskly walked) up and down the stairs and steep stuff and jogged between exercise areas without rest.

View From Our Room

1. At the dip bar, I would traverse back and forth 3 times in the dead hang position, scramble myself up to a dip position and walk across and back and then finish up with some sort of both feet & both hands monkey hang traverse.

2. At a 10 degree pitched grassy hill I would crab walk up it feet first, turn around and dog walk down on all fours, hands first. On the way up, I had to rely on my hamstrings to pull me up the hill and my arms, shoulders, stomach and back to support most of my weight. On the way back down, my triceps, shoulders and pecs did most of the work. (This is a suprisingly effective workout for butt, hamstrings, shoulders, pectorals, triceps, stomach and back!)
3. In a long empty parking garage, I jogged down on the line of concrete car stops, hopping from one to the next working on balance and focus. It became more difficult to maintain balance on the last two or so laps as I got tired and started to lose focus.

Another fun workout for the books. It really reminded me of being in highschool and running around Yellow Springs at night as I discovered tons of cool little nooks and crannies of the hospital grounds. We're headed home today if Bethany's doctor will ever show up to clear her so I won't be out again tonight. I have however rediscovered the benefits of having unstructured exercise from time to time. As long as I keep to an underlying theme like "1hr of continuous low level cardio", it can be quite an effective workout and more importantly it does a lot to keep things fresh and stave off workout burnout.

Hospital Workout 1

The Workout: fartlek with pack - 1hr

Last night, Noah Andrew Hagberg was born at 11:02pm (4/22). He is a beautiful little man beast, weighing in at 10lbs 3oz. Bethany and I had a fairly sleepless night getting him squared away and her recovered. Lucky for us, he slept a solid 5 hrs in the morning that let us get in some ZZZs. We all napped intermittently throughout the day and by nightfall, I was feeling pretty good albeit antsy from having been stuck in a hospital room for almost 24 hours. Around 9pm, Bethany and Noah were doing well and the nursing staff was great so I decided to get in a quick workout. I loaded up my AR pack, threw on a water belt fannie pack, donned my headlamp and hit the streets. Not wanting to stray too far in case I was needed, I turned the hospital campus and surrounding hills into a workout heaven. I basically just ran all over the place. Up and down stairwells and grassy hills, through parking garages, ducking in and out of the landscaping, over fences, under gates and so on. At one point I found what I thought would turn out to be a full exercise trail. There was what looked like a dip bar setup behind a large retaining wall. The only difference was it was about 8' tall and maybe 15' long. I could both hang from it as well as do dips and hand walks across it. After 40 minutes of this type of random play, I took a trek up the back side of Beaucatcher mtn to the radio tower and back on city streets and a gravel road. The final trek is the only place I used my headlamp as I wasn't interested in getting noticed by Hospital security. I kept my pace to an easy jog anywhere from moderate downhill to moderate uphill. Any stairs or steep stuff, I kept a brisk walk to develop my trekking muscles. The trekking (walking) proved to be just as tough as anything else after a while since my leg muscles have basically been built by a running form. My overall goals were to get in an all around good cardio workout, keep my heart rate low, keep moving for the whole hour and to have fun with some unstructured exercise. The whole workout was interesting and "fresh". 

I got back to our room to find an exhausted mom holding a fussy baby. Who can blame young Noah for feeling out of sorts; his whole world just got exponentially bigger and a lot more hi-def all at once.  After a shotgun shower and change, I took the night shift so Bethany could get some shut-eye. I must admit it was hard keeping my eyes open as I slow danced Noah around the dimly lit room. He finally settled down and I took a peek to confirm he was knocked out only to find his twinkling little eyes looking back up at me. Total heart melt.  I sat down on the couch with him propped up on my knees and we quietly checked each other out for about 15 minutes before he drifted off to sleep. That was just incredible.