Stan’s Obligatory Blog

Today was yet another stair climbing practice session at One California Plaza in downtown Los Angeles. 42 floors. 577 feet. I have no idea how many steps, but probably about 900*. Yes, it was time for more ‘fun’.

I didn’t have to go anywhere afterward, so I rode the train in from Pasadena. For some completely unexplained reason, they lowered the price of the Metro Rail day pass from $6 to $5. Well, I can’t complain about that. The train dropped me off at Pershing Square, and I walked over to the downtown YMCA.

I tried a new experiment today. Every time I’m going to go practice, I always wish I had something to wear that had a way to carry my wallet, camera, keys, and so forth. And today I just realized that I have lots of such things. I wear them every time I go bike riding. So, armed with this knowledge, I brought one of my Caltech bike jerseys along to wear for the climb. And it worked well. I had to put the camera in a plastic bag to protect it from the sweat, but aside from that, the scheme worked well.

There was a good group there for the practice session. When I got there, there were a lot of people already on their way up, including at least one fireman in full gear. I stood at the bottom for a few minutes, wondering what the hell I was thinking when I’d decided to do this yet again. But I finally started up the stairs. I passed a lot of people on the way up, and I made it to the top in 7:28, which is a good two seconds faster than last week. Even though going a second or two faster isn’t all that significant, it still beats last Spring. When I was practicing at the Aon building, I was going six seconds slower every time. That was frustrating. So I’m not complaining at all now. This is good.

* That’s based on 577 feet divided by the typical skyscraper stair step height of 7.7 inches.