Stan’s Obligatory Blog

Tonight was our second stair session at the Wells Fargo building. I was hoping to go a little bit faster on the first climb, and also hoping to get in four climbs. I borrowed a water bottle, so I was going to be able to drink some water between climbs. I figured that might help, since I forgot to bring water on Tuesday.

The first climb started off all right. I’d worked out some informal split time goals, and I managed to stay close to them for the first five minutes or so. After that, I started to fall a little bit behind. If I’d made my goal pace, I would have made the top in about 11 minutes. But instead, I had 11:24. Oh well. After an elevator ride down and some water, I started up a second time. This time, the goal was to just try and maintain about the same pace as the first time. It used to be that kind of pace was just loafing for me. But these days, I’m just not going as fast any more. And the second time up was considerably slower than the first. But at least it was faster than my second on Tuesday.

After another elevator ride and some more water, I headed up for a third time. I didn’t even bother timing it. I just wanted to see if I could make it to the top fast enough to get back down before they close the door to the stairwell at 7:10. And I did. It was probably about 15 minutes or so, and I made it back down with four minutes to spare before the door closed.

Heading up for the fourth time, I had 26 minutes to get to the top before the official end of practice at 7:30. I just took it easy. Well, as easy as it can be when each step takes a conscious act of will, and it’s nearly all I can do just to keep moving. There are fans blowing cool air into the stairs about every ten floors, and when I got to those flights, I stopped and laid down on the steps to feel the breeze and cool off. And in the end, I made it to the top in about 18 minutes, which was before the end of practice. So it was a good outing. I just want to work on trying to get more consistent times in. After all, I did reasonably well at the Towerthon in June.

So I’ll be back next week to do it again. And again, I’ll be asking, “Who thought this was a good idea???”