Stan’s Obligatory Blog

I’ve been in physical therapy for two weeks now, and I’m able to walk a lot better than before. Still not back to ‘normal’, but enough to try and make another attempt at the stairs. This time, my goal was to do at least three times up, and to do the first time at my vertical mile pace of 4 1/2 floors per minute. I was able to keep to that all the way up to about the 40th floor, and then I fell a few seconds behind. But in the end, I made it up in 11:25, which was only about 10 seconds off my target time.

The second time up I went somewhat slower. I’m still not really using the rail, so I’m missing out on the pulling. But that seems safer for my back for now. I was also trying to avoid twisting, so I was taking extra steps on the landings just to make for easier turns without having to grab the rail and swing around like I usually do.

The third time up, I went a lot slower. This was my first time doing three climbs since November. Veronica was going up on an ‘easy’ climb, single-stepping, and I wasn’t able to keep up with her. So I was going pretty slow. I did catch up to George at about 48, but he was wearing his 40-pound weight vest, so he had good reason for going slowly. In any event, I made it to the top the third time, and then I called it a night.