Stan’s Obligatory Blog

Today was another practice session at the Aon building in downtown L.A. Just a little climb up the stairs from the 4th floor to the 60th. Sounds simple. How hard could it be?

For some reason, I was having a hard time getting into the right mental state for this. All the way downtown on the train, I kept wondering if this was a good idea. A lot of this was because of my experience doing this last week.

When I got to the building, I checked in and headed up to the start of the stairs. There was a big group there to do it. I let almost all of them go ahead of me. I figured that having some people to catch might help me to get motivated. I stood at the bottom, looking up the stairs, and I felt a bit like this:

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Finally, I couldn’t procrastinate any more. It was time to do it. I’d decided to try an experiment this time. I wear a small metronome to use for setting my pace. I’ve noticed that the first 20-25 floors, I have to hold back a bit to keep on pace, and so today I decided that I was going to go without it for the first half of the climb. I’ve done enough of these things now that I know not to make the novice mistake of starting out too fast. But at the same time, I figured I might be able to get a good start on the climb by going a little faster at the start.

When I got to 32, I could tell I was starting to slow down. That was the halfway point, and I turned on the metronome. I immediately had to speed up a tiny bit to keep up with it. But that little beep in my ear helps to focus and keep going. I even managed a small burst of speed at the end, from 58 to 60. I stumbled out on the 60th floor and laid down on the concrete. Lots of top stair climbers lie down on the floor at the finish, so I thought I’d try it.

When I had a look at my watch, I was pleasantly surprised to see that I’d done it in 10:21, which is two seconds faster than my previous best time for this climb. So in the end, I’m glad that hauled myself downtown to do it.

Today’s bike club ride was a route down into East L.A. to join in CicLAvia. This is the second time they’ve done this. We were there the last time, and it was a fun little outing.

We took a roundabout route to East L.A., so as not to get there too early. Even so, we were there by 9:30, so we just set out on the route across the city.

In Little Tokyo, there was a big crowd outside the Japanese American Museum. Lance Armstrong was there, and he spoke to the crowd for a few minutes.

Continuing on, we went out to Westlake and then up into east Hollywood. That was the end of the route, so we turned around and rode back into downtown. At Main St, we turned off to head for home. We stopped for a bagel at Union Bagel in Union Station, since they have the nice courtyard outside the station. It had turned into a very nice day, so we wanted to sit outside.

From there, we just headed straight up Huntington Drive for the trip home. It was a nice ride.

47 miles.
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Once again, I had a kid sleeping in on Saturday, so I went for a little bike ride. It was basically the same route as last week, taking in some nice hills. About the only thing new that I saw was the half-built house at the top of the last hill. I don’t know how I’ve missed that all this time. Based on how weathered the wood is, it must have been sitting there half-built for at least a year or more.

29 miles.
cycling

I somehow managed to convince Lucinda to try doing one of the Aon building practice climbs with me today. We took the train downtown and got suited up to go.

I gave her a four-minute head start, so that I’d pass her somewhere along the way, but not too early in the climb. As it turned out, I caught her at about the 40th floor.

I was doing all right up to about 40 or 45, but then I was once again overcome with a wave of “OMG what the HELL was I thinking when I signed up for this.” I made it to the top, but I don’t know what my time was. I thought I knew how to use the split time feature on my stopwatch, but in my 60th-floor-delirium I must have pushed the wrong button. By the time I was recovered enough to look at the watch, I saw it was still running. So my time was probably a bit below 11 minutes, but I don’t know by how much. I just know it was nowhere near my best practice times.

I went back into the stairs to see Lucinda as she came up the last flights. I could see her when she was about five flights down from the top. Apparently, this was quite a bit harder than the 30-story stair climb we did in San Diego. That time, she was smiling when she came out at the top. But this time, she looked a bit like this:

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In the end, her time was 18:42, which is not bad at all. But she did say that it was the hardest thing she’s ever done, and I can’t disagree with that.

Today’s bike ride was another trip up the Hollywood hills to see the former Lookout Mountain Air Force Station. I recently got a DVD of a documentary about their work filming all of the nuclear bomb tests in Nevada and also the South Pacific. We’d done this ride before, but I figured out an easier way to get there this time.

On the way to Hollywood, we ran across the Thai New Year festival. That was kind of entertaining. Then we headed up into the hills. On the way up, I saw a fire engine. I’ve often wondered if they could fit those things up those narrow winding roads in the hills.

At the top, we took a quick turn through the portion of the street with the sign saying it had been “withdrawn from public use”. I have no idea what that means, but we still were able to get through. And that was a good thing. That put us at the top of Wonderland Dr, and it we didn’t have to do the uphill slog to get to the old Air Force building.

The former Air Force film studio is now a private house, so there’s not a lot to see from the outside. But it still looks like a 1940s military building, which makes for one odd-looking house.

We rode the rest of the way down Wonderland to get to Laurel Pass, which took us up to Mulholland Dr. Along the way, I saw the house with the alligators in front.

We rode a short distance east on Mulholland before taking some little streets down into Studio City. We stopped off at the gelato place. Sadly, it was kind of chilly today, so nobody was really in the mood for gelato. Doubly sad, since the last time we were there, it was 105 degrees and the gelato freezer was broken.

The rest of the ride home was pretty unremarkable. Pleasant, but not outstanding.

47 miles.
cycling

Lucinda is really enjoying sleeping in on weekends. So I had a few hours in the morning to go riding. I did a variation of the Foothill ‘Crown City Trainer’ ride, since I was in the mood to do some hills.

I got an action shot near the South Pasadena water tower. One of the houses there had a flat-topped mailbox that I could balance the camera on for a picture.

By the time I got up to the top of the big final hill, the sun was out, and it had turned into a very nice day. I stopped to look at the view and take another picture with the help of another mailbox. Then I headed home by way of Altadena.

At the corner of Mendocino and Lake I saw a sign advertising ‘Marcial Arts’. That’s a FAIL. Right up there with the exceedingly stupid TV movie they screened at my office a few years ago.

It was a nice ride.

32 miles.
cycling

Today was yet another practice climb at the Aon building in downtown L.A. So far this season, I’ve been consistently going slower every time I do it. So today was my chance to turn things around.

There was a good crowd there to do the climb today. I let a few people start out ahead, just so I’d have some people to catch and pass on the way up. My plan this time was to make the first big mechanical floor by the three-minute mark, the second one around seven minutes, aiming to be at the 60th floor in less than 10 1/2 minutes. I set my metronome on 76 for this attempt.

I got to 20 and the first mechanical floor at about 2 1/2 minutes. The second one was just under 7. By then, I’d passed everyone who started in front of me. And this was now the hardest part of the climb. I find it very hard to keep going when I reach the 45th floor or so. But this time, I just kept thinking,

“It won’t hurt less if I slow down.”

My experience is that slowing down doesn’t make it hurt less. The only thing that does is to stop and rest, and I’m too competitive to do that.

Today I noticed one other milestone that I filed away for future reference. The stairs in the Aon building are all just bare concrete, but starting at the 58th floor, the landings have linoleum on them. So that’s a good landmark to indicate that The End is Near. Landmarks like that are good to have, since I try very hard to not look at the floor numbers. They just go by entirely too slowly.

When I stumbled out on the 60th floor, I stopped my watch and saw that I’d made it up in 10:23. I was quite happy about that, since that was faster than last time, and it was also three seconds faster than my previous best practice time, and five seconds faster than my best from last year.

Back at the bottom, I spent a few minutes talking with Vanessa from the Lung Association. This is her first year organizing this event, and I think she’s doing a very good job so far.

On the train back to Pasadena, I had the usual Climber’s Cough. I wanted to tell everyone on the train, “Don’t you want <koff koff> to take up competitive stair climbing <koff> so you can be healthy <koff koff> like me?”

Good times…

Last Saturday was the anniversary of an important turning point in my life. It marked three years since Cathy moved out. I wrote about this after one year, and again at two years. It was helpful to stop and take stock and see how far I’d come in putting my life back on the rails. But this year, the day came and went and it wasn’t until today it even occurred to me that it was a significant date.

Now that’s progress.

Today was another practice climb up the Aon building in downtown Los Angeles. This is the fourth practice this spring. This time, I dialed the pace down a bit on my metronome. I’d been running it at 80 and failing to keep up. So this time I set it for 76.

There was a pretty good turnout for the practice today. I got there late, so I was by myself at the start. Last time, I paid attention and figured out that the two big un-numbered mechanical floors are right around 22 and 44, which is right around the 1/3 and 2/3 marks of the building. These make good landmarks.

I got to the 1/3 mark all right. But just a little bit before the 2/3 mark, I was nearly overcome by a wave of “OMG what the hell was I thinking when I signed up for this,” And that sort of thing makes it hard to push through the pain barrier. Of course, the funny thing is, it still hurts just as much if you slow down.

Somehow, I managed to keep moving, and I made it to the top in 10;42. That’s two seconds slower than last time. Last time was, in turn, eight seconds slower than the time before, which was six seconds slower than the first time.

So each time, I’m going just a little bit slower than the last. At least I’m consistent.

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