Another practice run
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Wednesday was the second practice session at the Aon Tower for the stair climb on the 24th. Work has been crazy this week because of the earthquake last Sunday, but I made a point to get downtown at lunchtime to try my legs on the stairs again.
Since Erik couldn’t make it this time, I rode the train there so as not to have to use my car. When I got there, Carla from the bike club was there. She works in one of the other big buildings downtown, and I’d told her about the climb on the ride last Sunday. She doesn’t want to do it, but she came by to see us practice. This worked out well, since I had my backpack and bike helmet with me, and she was able to take them on the elevator up to the 60th floor while I was climbing.
Last time, Erik and I had noticed that turning on the stair landings took a noticeable amount of time compared to the actual climbs up each flight. I took a wild guess and assumed that each stair landing eats up about 1 second. All together that would eat almost 2 minutes total for the climb. So if I want to make the top in 12 minutes, I need to do the actual 1377 steps in about 10 minutes, which would mean 137 steps per minute. Dividing by 2 to account for taking double steps, I get 69 per minute.
I got a small electronic metronome that clips on my belt. I set it for 69 beats per minute. I concentrated on just having one foot going up two steps for each beep.. And I made the climb to the 60th floor in 10:58. This was 15 seconds faster than last time, and works out to making the full climb in about 12:10. So I think it worked. Next time I’m going to try for 71 or 72.
On the train ride back, I had a touch of ‘Climber’s Cough’, which means I went pretty hard on the climb. But I still think I can go faster next time. It was a good practice session, and a good little mid-day adventure.
