Stan’s Obligatory Blog

Tonight was yet another stair practice session at the Aon building in downtown Los Angeles. I still think it’s a bit odd that, even though just walking is still painful for me due to my back going to hell and all, climbing stairs doesn’t hurt. And I’ve noticed that when I’m done, walking is better for about two hours before the pain returns. I can’t explain it, but I’m not complaining. Most people might think that climbing 204 floors of stairs to get two hours of back pain relief was not a good trade-off, but as I always say, “how hard could it be?”

There was a good crowd there tonight. Everyone was back from last weekend’s race at the Stratosphere Tower in Las Vegas. I skipped that one this year, since a trip to Las Vegas always involves a good bit of walking, and I thought that would just be too painful. But I got to hear everyone’s stories about the weekend, and Lisa was wearing wings on her shoes.

I paid a little more attention to the signs on the doors in the stairwell tonight. It looks like they let out into the utility hallway on most, but not all floors. Since floor 55 is empty, and it lets out on to that floor, that’s where we climb to.

I went up four times. The first two were at my vertical mile pace from last year. The last two were social climbs. I timed them, but nobody was trying to go fast. Still, it was a fun time.