Stan’s Obligatory Blog

Here we go again. Heading downtown for another evening of torture in the Aon Center stairwell.

It was raining today, so I had to take my car to work. And when I parked at the Metro station to go downtown, I saw a caterer’s car with a vanity license plate that said “GOT FOIE” I thought we couldn’t have that in California any more…

On the way downtown, I read as a tactic to avoid thinking about the fact that I was going there to climb stairs. I got the National Geographic app for my iPhone, so I was reading an article there about the Kyrgyz people who live in a little-known corner of Afghanistan, high up in the mountains. It was interesting, but at the same time, it read like if Monty Python were doing a sketch about the worst place in the world to live.

Much of it is above 14,000 feet. The wind is furious; crops are impossible to grow. The temperature can drop below freezing 340 days a year. Many Kyrgyz have never seen a tree.

Sounds wretched. But it gets worse.

I met one couple… who had 11 children. “Every year,” said Abdul, “one would die.” They died as infants, as toddlers, as little kids.

Even bits of everyday life sound wretched.

The basic unit of Kyrgyz currency is a sheep. A cell phone costs one sheep. A yak costs about 10 sheep. A high quality horse is 50. The going rate for a bride is 100. The wealthiest families own the ultimate Kyrgyz status symbol — a camel, the two-humped kind, called a Bactrian, that appears perpetually foul tempered.

And then for a final bit of wretchedness:

Er Ali Bai is the owner of the only chicken in Kyrgyz country. The chicken, a hen, has one leg. The other was lost to frostbite.

So with that as preparation, climbing 50+ flights of stairs didn’t sound so bad any more. I got to the building and got ready to head up the stairs.

This time, I managed to stick to my split times up to the six-minute mark at the 39th floor. But by eight, I was a few seconds behind. Still, I made it to the top in 9:04, which is right in the range of the other times I’ve done this building recently, and it consistent with my times from practice last year. So I can’t complain. At least I don’t have to try and figure out how to make change when buying things with sheep.

After a brief rest, I headed up a second time. My goal for the second time was just to do it non-stop. I didn’t much care how fast I did it. I just wanted to make it up to the top. It was grim, but I made it in 11:37, which is not bad for a second time.

There was a nice sunset going on when I got to the top of the building. I tried to take pictures of it, but the iPhone camera didn’t do a good job of capturing the low light. I did some looking, and I found that there are special camera apps for taking pictures at night, so I got one to try out next time.

And thus ended another session of mortification in the stairwell.

It’s Tuesday, and it’s time for the latest installment of climbing stairs for fun and pain. Once again, I went downtown to the Aon building to do battle with stairway 6. And once again, I was dreading it all the way there on the train.

I got there a few minutes late today, so all the other regulars had already started up the staircase. I started my watch and headed up. I was a few seconds ahead of schedule at two minutes, but by four minutes, I was about 10 seconds behind. The gap grew a little bit more up to the 8-minute mark. Then I put on a good sprint for the last three floors. I’d been thinking about my old racing days at Kissena Velodrome in New York. Back then, my favorite racing strategy was to attack on the back stretch at 1 1/2 laps to go. We’d be riding into the setting sun there, so that gave me a little cover. And at least at first, nobody thought I’d be able to pull off a full-on sprint for 600 meters to the finish line. But I could, and I did. So back in those days, a 600-meter sprint took me about 45 seconds. So when I got to the 52nd floor, I just envisioned the back stretch at Kissena and just started running. I managed to maintain that up to 55, where I fell in a heap on the landing. After a few minutes of moaning and panting, I got up and had a look at my watch. I had 9:07, which is not great, but not bad. It’s slower than the 9:04 I posted last time I was here, but faster than the 9:10 I did a week ago.

I went back down and started up again. I wanted to just see if I could do a 12-second-per-floor ascent the second time. If I’m fresh, 12 seconds feels pretty slow. But on the second time up, it’s hard. In the end, I made it up the second time in 11:44, which works out to an average of 13.8 seconds per floor.

After the second time, I was done, so I changed and headed for home. It wasn’t a great outing, but it wasn’t bad, either. And it’s all good preparation for the race in April.

It’s Thursday, and time to go torture myself on the Aon building staircase again. As always, I was dreading it and trying not to think about it all the way there on the train. And when I got there, I just suited up and headed up the stairs.

As has been usual lately, I was on target at the 2-minute mark, and about 10 seconds off pace at 4 minutes. I managed to stay 10 seconds off pace to the 6-minute mark, and I lost a few more seconds on the final 15 or so floors. I got to the top at 55 in 9:04. That’s faster than Tuesday’s time, but a bit slower than last Thursday’s. But when I was reviewing my write-ups from practices there last year, when I was doing the climb from 4 to 60 in about 9:50, several times I made mention that I was passing 54 right at the 9-minute mark. Which means that if I’m getting to 55 in 9:10, then I’m right on the same pace as my best practice times last year. So I don’t feel bad about doing a 9:04 tonight.

After a few minutes rest, I headed back down and started up again. The second time is always hard, and my only goal for it was to do it without stopping, and at a steady pace. I went pretty slow, at least by my standards. But I kept a steady pace, and I even passed one guy. Right at the end, one of the other regular climbers caught up to me, so we ran together up the last four or so floors. For a second time up, 10:50 isn’t too bad for me.

I knew that Lucinda wasn’t going to be home early tonight, so I knew I had time for one more round. The third time was just planning on walking it. I didn’t time it, and stopped to take pictures along the way. But it’s telling that even when I’m taking it easy and going slow, I still end up soaked in sweat. No matter how you slice it, stair climbing is hard. At times like these, I remember JFK:

“We choose to go to the moon. We choose to go to the moon in this decade and do the other things, not because they are easy, but because they are hard…”

Sure, climbing skyscrapers isn’t going to the moon. But when you’re climbing that many stairs, it really feels like it.

After that, I packed up and went home. It was a pretty good outing.

It’s Tuesday, and that means it’s time to go to stair practice again. And again, all the way there on the train, I was wondering just why do I do this? It’s insane.

So I got to the building, got suited up, and headed up the stairs. I’ve found that it hurts the same whether I just go or if I sit around talking to everyone at the bottom. So I didn’t waste any time. Several people went up before me, but I only caught one of them by the time I got to the top. I used my same splits from last time, but I was only able to stay on schedule up to the 4-minute mark. By 6 minutes, I was about 15 seconds off the pace, and when I heaved up onto the 55th floor landing, I had 9:10, or about 20 seconds slower than I’d wanted to do.

A few minutes later, George came up and out of the stairs, and he proceeded to roll around on the floor in agony for a couple minutes. In this sport, that’s how you can tell that you’re doing it right.

After a few minutes rest, George and I went back down and got out some supplies. He’d brought a 25-foot tape measure, and I had a notepad and pens. We wanted to get some more accurate measurements to figure the step height in the staircase.

We walked down to ground level and started up from there. We took two measurements on the 80-step staircase that leads from ground up to 4. One was three flights, 17 steps, and the other was four flights, 24 steps. Based on those measurements, it appears that the first staircase up to 4 averages about 7.5 inches per step.

The rest of the way up, we took two measurements on each of the three major sections of the stairway. Each measurement was one floor, 22 steps. Based on those measurements, the steps on the staircase above 4 average about 7.36 inches. Doing some math:

80 x 7.5 = 50 feet to the 4th floor
1,313 x 7.36 = 805 feet from 4 to the roof
50 + 805 = 855 which agrees well with the published height of 858 for the building

After all that, I was done. And it was time to get changed to head over to the Central Library. Kathleen and I had reservations for the ALOUD program tonight. It was author Amy Wilentz talking about her new book about Haiti, Farewell, Fred Voodoo: A Letter from Haiti. And in one of those weird cosmic coincidences, I’d found out that her brother Tommy and I had been in the same third grade class back in 1967 in New Jersey. It’s kind of funny that I was able to remember that, since even though there were only 11 of us in that class, I can only remember names for maybe three of the kids who were there. But he was one of them. Anyway, it was an interesting talk, and we enjoyed it.

It was a fun evening, and now I can go correct my stair chart for the Aon building.

This evening was the second practice session at the Aon building in downtown Los Angeles. The practice climbs run from 4 up to 55. That’s 1,126 steps and about 705 feet, or 214.5 meters straight up.

I went there today with a goal in mind. I wanted to generate 300 watts of power on this climb. With that in mind, I figured that I’d have to get to the top in about 8:53. The Aon building stairwell is an odd beast. It has several fairly long hallways that divide the three main sections of the staircase. The hallways and fire doors eat up maybe 15-20 seconds of the total climb, so with that in mind, I worked out some split times. I figured that, starting at floor 4, at the 2, 4, 6, and 8 minute marks, I should be at floors 16, 27, 39, and 50. That’s about 12 floors for every two minutes, except for the two increments that included hallways and fire doors. This works out to about 10.2 seconds per floor, and I calculated that a setting of 71 on my metronome should do it.

At the bottom, I took a minute to get all my gear set up, and then I turned on the metronome and started up the stairs. I was able to stay on schedule almost up to the six-minute mark. I was having trouble keeping up with the metronome on the turns in the middle section of the staircase. The landings are wide there, and it makes for a difficult turn if you’re trying to just put one foot and the landing and pivot from one flight to the next.

When I got to 55, I had 9:01, which is a bit off my goal, but it’s not bad. Doing some math:

1,126 steps x 7.5 inches per step = 8,445 inches = 214.5 meters
214.5m x 76.5kg x 9.8 = 160,811 joules expended energy
160,811J / 541 seconds = 297 watts

It’s not quite my goal of 300, but it’s pretty close.

After a few minutes lying on the floor panting, I went back down. At 4, I met up with George and Jeff. George had found an error in my staircase chart for the building, so the three of us walked down from 4 to the ground-level doors and we counted off both staircases that lead up to 4. And yes, it turned out I’d miscounted two six-step flights as fives. So my whole count was off by two, and the total step count to the roof is really 1,393. Good to know. Also, knowing that the staircase we use for the race begins with a sequence of 9 six-step flights, that means I know a nice efficient stepping pattern for that.

The corrected stair chart is on my ‘Stairs’ page: http://1134.org/stan/Stairs

I went up the stairs a second time, but I was pretty wiped out from the first climb. So I went very slowly, and I played tourist along the way, taking some pictures of some of the odd features of the Aon building staircase. I took one picture looking straight up the stairway shaft in the middle section of the building. I’m standing on the 24th floor, and the ceiling off in the distance is at the top of the 43rd floor. That’s a lot of stairs. I didn’t bother to time the second climb, but I did make it to the top. I even perked up a bit when I got to 45, since I knew I was almost at the end.

Once more, it was a good outing.

It’s January, and that means it’s time to start practice climbs at the Aon building in downtown Los Angeles. The race is on April 6th, and the building is gracious enough to let us practice twice a week on the race staircase from now until the event on April 6th. And tonight was the first practice session.

The entry point to the stairs is the 4th floor, since the only doors below that level are on the outside of the building. In the past, we climbed from 4 up to the vacant 60th floor. But since last year, they finally managed to rent out the 59th and 60th floors, so now we get to climb up to the vacant 55th floor. That’s five floors an about 70 feet less vertical distance, but it’s still enough to hurt.

Since tonight was the first practice, there was a bit of confusion, and the guards at the bottom told us we were only going to go to 54. So I planned my run accordingly, and when I heaved myself up onto the landing at 54 and stopped my watch, the door was closed, and there was nobody there. So I went up one more floor, and the door was open there, and one of the building guys was sitting on the stairs waiting for us. So my time was a little off. I had 9:14 for the climb to 54. That’s an average of about 11 seconds per floor, so if I’d gone to 55, it would have been about 9:25. That’s not terrible, but it’s not great, either.

We went back down and then came up again. The second time, I went a lot slower. I maintained a steady pace, but I wasn’t trying to push it, and my time of 12:44 shows it.

I was thinking about going home after two, but Mary said she was going to go up again, so I decided to go along just for the walk. I went a little ahead of her, and held the fire doors open for her. Some might have thought I was being chivalrous, but I really just wanted an excuse to stop and catch my breath. The third time I didn’t even time, so I have no idea how long it took. I was just glad to see 55 so I could stop and go home.

As an aside, I’ve been taking the train downtown for practice climbs for three years now. And every time I’m walking through Union Station to get to the subway, I have to walk past Wetzel’s Pretzels. The place seems popular. There’s often a line there. But for some reason, the smell of it just makes me want to retch. So I try and hold my breath walking by there, and I hope that the wind doesn’t blow the smell down into the subway. So imagine my horror on the way home when I saw a big sign announcing that they’re opening a new location in the Hope St entrance to the 7th St Metro station. Yick. Now I get to be assaulted by that smell at both ends of the subway.

Anyway, it was a good outing. I even brought along some of my award-winning cookies to share with the other climbers, the building guards, and also the people from the Lung Association who were there to promote the event. I figure I haven’t seen most of them since last year’s race, so it was an excuse to tell the story of winning the blue ribbon again.

Today was the Cystic Fibrosis Foundation stair climb in the Figueroa at Wilshire building in downtown Los Angeles. This is their third time doing this event, and it’s also my third time doing it.

I’d been getting a bit discouraged in practice over the last month. I was having a lot of trouble getting back up to the speed I was doing in practices back in the summer. But today was my chance at redemption.

They had the competitive climbers line up first, and we sorted ourselves out roughly by how fast we all thought we’d go. At the start, I was trying to convince Veronica that she should start ahead of me, but she didn’t want to. So I started right behind Ryan, who nearly caught me on the stairs at the 2010 climb, so this was good. We’re pretty evenly matched, so each of us was hoping to beat the other.

By the time I got to about 15, Veronica had made up 30 seconds on me, and so I let her go by. I’d made up split times, aiming to be at the top in about 8:30, and I was on schedule when she passed me. I decided to try and at least keep her within earshot as we continued up. At the six minute mark I was still on schedule at the 37th floor, but I could see that Veronica was slowing down, and I was gaining on her. I caught her at 49, and ran past her up the final two floors. That was a special moment. She’s passed me many times, but this was the first time I managed to pass her back.

At the top, I did my usual lie-down-on-the-floor thing. I can’t really call it a ‘face-plant’ any more, since now I know what a real face-plant looks and feels like.

I stayed up at the top until Lucinda came out. Then Kathleen came up. She said she’d been on the 46th floor landing with the camera, and she’d taken pictures of us as we went by. I, of course, had no memory of having seen her. Or anyone else for that matter.

We all rode the elevator back down to the lobby. By that time, they were already starting to compile times. Ryan told me that I’d beaten him by one second. So it turned out that we were pretty evenly matched. My time was 8:38, and that was good for third in the 50-59 age group. This was more than 10 seconds faster than I’d done in any of the practices, so that’s good, even if it’s still slower than my race time last year.

When they did the awards, because Mark was the overall winner, they gave him the winner’s trophy, and pushed the 50-59 age group awards down one place. So I got the second-place medal, which is always a nice thing.

After everything was done, most of the West Coast Labels team walked across the street to Engine Co 28 for lunch.

It was a nice time.

Addendum: The average floor in this building is 23 steps. Doing some math:

1,181 / 23 = 51.3

So the climb is the equivalent of 51.3 ‘regular’ floors. Doing more math:

8:38 = 518 seconds
518 / 51.3 = 10.1

So I averaged 10.1 seconds per floor, which is not too bad for doing more than 50 floors. And working out power production:

689 feet = 210 m
210m * 76.5kg * 9.8 = 157437 joules
157437 joules / 518 seconds = 304 W
304 W = just a bit over 0.4 hp

Can’t complain too much about any of that.

Addendum: Results are here: http://raceresults.eternaltiming.com/index.cfm/20121201_Climb_For_Life_Los_Angeles.htm

Tonight was the last practice climb before the CFF stair climb on Saturday morning. So far this year, I’ve been doing all the races between 10 and 40 seconds faster than last year. But for some reason, on this one, I haven’t been able to even come close to the 8:33 I did at last year’s race. I don’t think there’s any physical reason for this. But I just don’t seem to be able to push through the barrier on this climb.

Back in the summer, I did 8:19 at the 777 Tower. That was 1,139 steps to the 50th floor. That was averaging 10 seconds per floor. At that pace, I should be able to do the 1,181 steps here in 8:30 or so. But that speed has been staying just out of reach.

In any event, Saturday is the race, and after that, I get at least a month off with no stair climbing. Then practice begins at the Aon building and we start all over again.

Tonight was the next-to-last practice climb before the CFF stair climb race on December 1st. Once again, I was looking to see if I could improve on my last year’s best practice time of 8:32.

I got to the building early for no particular reason. Just happened to make the train connections just right. So I sat around for a while before everyone else showed up. I’d made up a little card of split times and pinned it to my glove. And when it was time to go, I made a point of going first. I wanted to see how it would work out if I didn’t have to pass anyone. And it worked out well from the standpoint of being able to just concentrate on my stepping pattern and not having to go around anyone. But on the other hand, it’s terribly lonely being alone on an endless staircase with only my own thoughts for company.

I was a bit ahead of schedule at the two-minute mark. At four minutes, I was right on schedule. But at six minutes, I was about 10 seconds behind. I didn’t look at eight minutes, and I just tried to put on a burst of speed at the end. And when I got to 51, I had 8:50. That’s eight seconds faster than my last two practice climbs here, but it’s still 18 seconds slower than my best time from last year.

So that’s the story from the stairwell. There is one more practice in two weeks, and the race is two weeks from this coming Saturday. We will see if I can locate my missing stair-climbing-mojo between now and then.

Last weekend’s trip to Chicago was more than just stair-climbing agony. We played tourist and visited, too.

We got in on Friday evening. For some reason, JetBlue doesn’t fly to O’Hare any more from anywhere in southern California. So we ended up on United, which meant flying out of LAX. Yikes. And paying $50 to check our bags. Yikes again. But aside from that, it was all right. And on the way in, I got a good view of downtown and the Sears Willis Tower. Once more, yikes.

Friday night, we got on the train and went for dinner at the Blue Line Lounge again. We’d gone there last time and liked it.

Saturday morning, we had to go downtown to pick up my packet for Sunday’s race. While we were there, we saw some of our stair-climbing friends, and I got to contemplate once more what was in store for Sunday morning.

On Saturday afternoon, we had tickets for the Chicago Architecture Foundation’s boat tour of the Chicago River. Sure, it’s a bit chilly this time of year, but we were prepared. So we bundled up and took the tour.

I’d been reading The Devil in the White City by Erik Larson, and I just finished it before we left on Saturday morning. It’s the story of the 1893 World’s Fair in Chicago, and the intertwined story of H.H. Holmes, who is regarded as one of the first American serial killers. A good bit of the book is about Daniel Burnham, who was the chief architect of the fair, and also is one of the pioneers of steel-framed skyscrapers. So there’s one tie-in with the weekend’s activities. At the end of the book, Larson said that Burnham died in 1912, and that he and his family are buried at Graceland Cemetery in Chicago. So of course I checked the map and saw that we could go there after the boat tour.

We rode the Red Line north out of downtown, and then we walked over to Graceland. By this time, it was about 3:30. When we got there, there was a sign saying that the cemetery was closing at 4:15. So we didn’t have much time. As it turned out, the pond was all the way at the back of the cemetery, and I almost ended up having to run there to get there and back before closing. But I made it and got my photos.

After the cemetery visit, we took the Red Line back downtown to meet up with the West Coast Labels team for our night-before dinner at the Elephant and Castle.

Sunday morning was the stair climb. I wrote that up separately, so I won’t go over it again here. After that, we went back to our hotel and got packed up to leave. Then we took the Blue Line back downtown again. We had lunch at Giordano’s, which seems to be one of the few places downtown that’s open on weekends. Even McDonald’s was closed. We saw a crew filming something downtown. It was funny because they were spraying fake snow. We see film crews with fake snow here in L.A. all the time, but I think that fake snow in Chicago is funny. Sort of like how people there wonder why there are tanning salons in L.A.

After lunch, we walked over to Union Station to get the train to Libertyville to visit with Kathleen’s aunt and uncle. Once again, I chuckled about the railroad cars and their builder’s plate:

Engineered & Manufactured by
American Passenger
Rail Car Company
Chicago, Illinois

Nippon Sharyo, Ltd

Who says American industry is on the decli… oh.

Monday was some more playing tourist before it was time to go home. We took a walk with the neighbor’s dog for a bit, and then we went downtown to the Art Institute of Chicago. They have a very good collection there. From Seurat to Grant Wood to Cy Twombly. A full range of art and art-like things. We spent the afternoon there until it was time to go to the airport for our flight home.

All told, it was a fun trip.

Pictures are here:

http://www.1134.org/gallery/main.php/v/stan/trips/chicago2012/