Stan’s Obligatory Blog

Today was the fourth practice session at the 55-story Wells Fargo building in downtown Los Angeles. This time I’d decided to try another experiment. The last time, I’d dialed my pace up a bit to see what would happen. I did a good time, but it was a real struggle to keep up with the metronome the last 15 floors. So I wanted to see if I could dial the pace down a bit and still do a good time if I set it to something I could better keep up with.

This time there was a big crowd of people there to do the stairs. I waited until near the end to go. Partly because I find it psychologically gratifying to pass people, and partly because Mark was there. Mark is very, very good at this. And I wanted to be sure to go after him, since he was the one person there who I knew would pass me if I started first. So when I went, there were a lot of people ahead of me. I passed a lot of them, but I know that that slowed me down, since I had to take the long way around them on the landings, and that added a few seconds for each group I passed.

In the end, I did 9:46, which is a bit slower than last time, but I think that if I hadn’t had to pass so many people, I would have done closer to 9:30, which was my goal for the evening. As always, I looked and sounded like I was about to die by the time I got to the top. But that’s all right. After all, if you don’t sound like you’re going to die, it means you’re not going fast enough. So overall, it was a good outing.

One more practice next Monday, and then the event is next Friday.

And I’m still in need of some sponsors to make my fundraising minimum for the YMCA, so if you can, please stop by and make a small tax-deductible donation to them. It’s a good cause.