Last time.
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Tonight was the last practice session at the Aon building, and I wanted to go up the stairs just a few more times. I’m about as ready as I’m going to be for the race on Saturday. Which is to say, I’m not really ready to race, but I’m going to go in more with the intention of just taking it easy and doing it for the experience and for the social aspect of getting to see all my crazy stair-climbing friends there.
The first time up, I wanted to take just an easy, but brisk pace. And I ended up with a 9:55 for 51 floors. That’s just a bit over five floors per minute, and it’s slightly faster than I went the first time I did this climb. back in 2009. But the difference now is that that pace is ‘brisk, but moderate’, while the first time I did it, it was ‘I feel like I’m gonna die!’ So that’s progress.
I took a moment to take a picture looking up the stair shaft. Just to get a sense of how the stairs feel infinite when we’re climbing them. They just go on endlessly, with every landing looking exactly the same as the one before and the one after. And the buttons in the service elevator are proof that the building is honest, and they didn’t skip the 13th floor.
In the end, I went up three times, just because I could. And because after Saturday, I’m not going to be seeing the inside of this building until next year.
