Another day, another half-mile
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It’s Monday, and time to hit the stairs again. We had a good group today, with four of us from the office heading downtown on the train. My plan for this evening was to ramp up the pace just a little bit over what I did last Wednesday. I’m slowly getting back into doing my first climb of the evening for speed. We’re still climbing the Figueroa-Wilshire building. The climb is 50 stories, from 1 to 51, 1,181 steps. The typical floor in that building is 23 steps, so the climb works out to the equivalent of 51.3 ‘normal’ floors. The last two floors from 49 to 51 are taller than normal.
Two weeks ago, I did the first climb in 9:56, which seemed like a pretty relaxed pace. A week ago I made up split times aiming to be at the top in 9:30, which was a bit faster, but not too much of a strain. So tonight I was aiming to do 9:15. Now, this is starting to feel like a pretty brisk pace up the stairs, without being too punishing. That’s 5 1/2 floors per minute. I found that keeping track of the splits was a useful diversion. I checked my watch at each one-minute goal, and after passing each one, I had to mentally add 5 1/2 to it to figure out the next one-minute goal. And all that arithmetic is a good distraction from thinking, “What the f#ck was I thinking doing this again!?!” And I was pleasantly surprised to make the 45th floor in under 8 minutes, which meant I was a bit ahead of schedule. And I made it to the finish at 51 in 9:12, three seconds ahead of the target.
My plan was to continue on and do three more climbs at my ‘modest pace’, which is 4 1/2 floors per minute, getting to the top in about 11:20. The second climb, I came in a bit under that by accident. The third was a little bit over target, but pretty close. And then the fourth time up, my time sort of fell off the cliff. The last time up, I didn’t even look at my watch. And I kept thinking, “whose idea was this anyway?” It didn’t help when Chris kept reminding me that it was all my idea. Anyway, we slogged up the staircase that last time in 13:07. Not terrible for a fourth time up, but not the steady pacing I did last week when I did four climbs, all in exactly the same time.
Still, all told, it was a good outing. Four times up adds up to 2,756 feet, which is a bit over a half-mile. Not too bad for one hour.
