Stan’s Obligatory Blog

A few days ago, I was contacted by some of the people from the West Coast Labels stair climbing team, and they asked if I’d meet with a producer from KCRW at one of the practice sessions at the Aon building downtown. So tonight was the night.

Sadly, I was home sick today. I’d left work early yesterday with a fever. And today had been spent taking sudafed and ibuprofen, and wishing I wasn’t sick. But since I’d agreed to go, I took an extra decongestant, got dressed, and headed downtown.

I met Evan on the front steps of the building, and we went inside and up to the guard station to sign in. It took him a few minutes to convince the security people to let him climb the stairs with me, even though he wasn’t signed up for the race. But in the end, we got our clearance and headed up the stairs.

We walked up slowly. Partly so we could talk, and partly because I was in no condition to be trying to go fast. On the way up, I told about what it was like doing stair climbing races. I explained the basic technique of taking the fewest number of steps to climb the staircase, and how not to waste steps on the landings. A few times, other people passed us on the stairs, and he sometimes asked them questions as they went by. We stopped a few times to rest and talk, and we finally made it up to the 55th floor in just a bit under 18 minutes. That’s about half as fast as I’d be going normally, so it was a pretty easy pace, even with being sick.

At the top, we walked around the empty 55th floor, looking out the windows at the view. I pointed out the other buildings where there are races, and also the buildings we’ve trained in. All told, it was an interesting experience, and he said he would go back to the studio and somehow craft a piece for the radio out of our talking that he’d recorded.

With that done, I went home and went back to just being sick.