Stan’s Obligatory Blog

…but this is great.

Today was yet another practice climb at the 777 Tower in downtown Los Angeles. And again, I did new best time. There’s nothing not to like about that.

As always, I rode the train there after work. It’s so easy and pleasant. I got there a few minutes early, got signed in and ready to climb. This time, I went first into the stairwell. Everyone else there at the time said I would pass them, so they said I should go first. So I started up. By the time I was at 7 or 8, there was a guy catching up behind me. He came up right behind me at about 10, so I stepped to the side and asked if he wanted to pass. And he sort of croaked out, “I’m just trying to keep up with you”, so I went back to the inside and kept going. He shadowed me up to about 20 before he fell off the pace.

I’d made up a card of split times aiming to be at the top by 8:10. I was on schedule at 10 and 20, but by 30 I was a couple seconds off. I also noticed one odd thing. from 30 to 40 I altered my normal stepping pattern in order to switch which leg was doing more work. And at 36, I suddenly found myself hitting the landing on the wrong foot. So the second flight between 35 and 36 had an extra step in it. I had to do a quick adjustment to get back on track, and I made a mental note to pay attention to that the next time up.

When I got to 40, I was still a few seconds behind schedule, but I could see that I still had a chance at a good time. I started to wind it up at about 46, picking up the pace a bit, and at 48, I started a full-on sprint. I ran the last two floors, and then did the traditional face-plant on the 50th floor landing. When I looked at my watch, I saw that I’d done an 8:19, which is a good four seconds faster than my previous best time. And I realized later that this marks the first time I’ve gone under 10 seconds per floor for a large building climb.

After just a few minutes rest, I rode the elevator down and headed up again. The second time, I was planning on going slower. I paid attention, and I saw that, while most of the building is 23 steps per floor, divided into 12/11 flights, from 35 to 36 and from 45 to 46 are both 12/12. So I have to correct my chart for this building. Even going slower, the second time is a lot more painful than the first. Still, I made it to the top in 9:38, which works out to about 11.2 seconds per floor. The first couple races I did, back in 2009, I averaged about 12 seconds per floor, and I felt like I was gonna die! So doing 11.2 when I’m not particularly trying to go fast shows just how much I’ve improved in this insane little sport.

Overall, it was a fun evening.

Today was yet another trip to downtown to climb the 777 Tower. I was hoping to possibly beat my time from last week, but in reality, if I came anywhere close to it, I’d be happy.

We had a big group from the office going downtown today. We rode the train, and, as usual, it was a pleasant trip. The LED-crawl signs in the Metro stations told us about the upcoming phase-out of paper tickets for the train, so we got to all weigh in on how stupid we think the TAP card system is.

We got to the building a few minutes early, got signed in, and we were in the first group up the stairs. I used my same set of split times from last week today. I made it to 10 and 20 a few seconds ahead of schedule. At 30 and 40, I was about 5 seconds behind. I put on a burst of speed from about 46 to 50, and I made it to the top in 8:28. That’s 5 seconds slower than last week, but still in the same ballpark, so I’m happy with that.

When NIck got to the top, he hammed it up for the camera a bit. We got some souvenir pictures on 50, and then we headed back down to do it again. Chris was right behind Nick, and Morgan was along just about a minute later. Looking down the stair shaft, I could see her glove on the railing. And Karina made it up the stairs too, which is not bad for a first-timer. She’s come with us to Millikan at Caltech, but that’s only 10 stories. This was her first time doing a big building.

The second time up, I planned on taking it easy. Chris shadowed me all the way up until about 45. That’s when another guy passed us, and I decided I was going to race him the rest of the way up. In the end, I got 9:53, which is not too bad for just loafing on the stairs.

It was a good outing.

Back in March, when I was at the Aon stair climb, there was a reporter from the L.A. Times there. He
was going to do an article on stair climbing to run in the late summer, and he was looking for general information. He was also preparing to climb the Aon building that morning. So I got a chance to talk to him, and I explained my basic method that I worked out in practice. It’s a way to climb the stairs with a minimum of wasted steps, also with the load balanced as much as possible between the two legs.

So today, the article came out. And I got first and last mention. That’s pretty good. I’m the nerd of the stairs:

www.latimes.com/health/la-he-stairs-20120818,0,7480034.column

Today was yet another practice session at the 777 Tower in downtown Los Angeles. 50 stories, 1,138 steps. I’d done a new best time on Monday, and I went in today hoping just to recreate that time.

At the start, I didn’t have anyone else around me. I just headed up, using the same time targets as on Monday. I made it to 10 right on schedule. At 20, I was still on schedule. When I got to 30, I was five seconds behind, but that’s about the amount of time I spent going down the little hallway on 23. And at 40, I was seven seconds behind schedule. I kept going, and starting at 46, I managed to speed up. Just a little at first, but up to a full run the last two floors. I ran up on to the landing at 50, and then I saw that I’d done 8:23. Which was not only as fast, but a full seven seconds faster than on Monday. Which is great. That means I made up something close to fifteen seconds on the last four floors. Can’t complain about that.

After a bit of rest, we regrouped and headed back down to do it again. This time, the plan was go slower and take it easy. I was experimenting some with different stepping patterns to even out the load on both legs. This time, Nick was right behind me most of the way up. But then at about 43, he decided to go faster, and he passed me. I just let him go. I did make a small effort to speed up at the end, but I couldn’t catch him. In the end, he did something like 9:23 and I had 9:41.

I think that one of these times, I want to try another experiment. Once up this building is almost exactly 1/2 of the Sears Willis Tower in Chicago. I’m still in search of breaking 20 minutes there. That’s about 12 seconds per floor, on average. That used to be my race pace, but lately, when I’ve tried going that speed, it feels really slow. So I want to try doing two climbs here, and try to aim for 12 seconds per floor, and see if I can do that pace twice. It will be a good experiment.

All told, it was a good outing.

Time for another stair climbing practice session at the 777 Tower in downtown Los Angeles. My goal for the day was to do it in 8:30 or less.

We had a good entourage. Myself, Morgan, Chris, and Nick all came along. We rode the train downtown, got signed in, and we were ready to climb.

I made up a little card of time targets to check my progress on the way up. Right from the start, Chris got behind me and shadowed me, just like he did at the U.S. Bank climb last fall. That was good, because it gave me a good incentive to keep up a brisk pace. And we did, all the way to 20, where he collapsed on the landing, gasping like a fish out of water.

At that point, I tried to maintain my pace. It was hard, but I kept it up. And when I got to about 30, I could see Nick was gaining on me. He was just about one floor below me. So that was what I needed to pick up the pace. I held him off all the way to about 45. At that point, I took a look at my watch, and I saw that my goal was within sight. So I put on a little burst of speed for the last three or four floors, and I came out on 50 with a nice time of 8:30.

After we all got to the top, we rested a bit before heading back down. At the bottom we rested a bit more before heading up a second time. The second time, we all planned on taking it easy. I experimented some more with varying my stepping pattern to even out the load between legs. All the way up, I just did an easy pace, but when I got to 45, I could see that if I ran the last five floors, I could make it to the top under 10 minutes. So I picked up the pace, all the way to a full run up the last two floors, and I came out on 50 with 9:58. I’d like to think that’s pretty good for basically just loafing most of the way up.

And doing a bit of math:

7 inches x 1,138 steps = 7,966 inches = 664 feet = 202 meters
664 feet x 2 = 1,328 feet = 404 meters
1,320 feet = 1/4 mile = 402 meters

For comparison, the world record for running 400 meters is 43.18 seconds. But when you turn that 90 degrees so that it’s straight up, it’s a little slower going.

So now we’re thinking about trying to put on a vertical mile race some day. That should be a nice bit of insanity.

Today was the second practice session at the 777 Tower. This time, I was armed with my complete stair chart and my stopwatch, and I was ready to see if I could improve my time from Monday.

I figured out that the actual floor count of the climb is an honest 50 stories, so I decided that I would use floors 10, 20, 30, and 40 as time points. Each 10 floors in this building is a vertical climb of 134 feet, which is almost exactly the same as the 142 feet we climb in 10 floors when we’re practicing at the Caltech library. I’m usually able to do that climb in 1:40 or less, so I decided to aim for doing the complete 50 floors in 8:30. This would be about 1:42 per 10 floors. So I made up a little card with time goals and clipped it to my glove, next to my watch.

Nick and I started out together. I used the stepping pattern I’d planned, and things were going well. At 10, we were about 2 seconds behind schedule, which I thought was pretty good. At 20, we were still just 2 seconds behind. Same at 30. At 33, the concrete steps started, and I decided to count them down, just for a distraction. Nick had been tailing me all the way up, but he fell off at about 37. I kept going, and at 40, I was 4 seconds behind schedule. I kept on going, and put on a little sprint from 47 to 50. I flopped down on the landing, and when I looked at my watch, I saw 8:34, which is pretty close to my goal for the evening.

We rode down to the lobby and rested outside for a few minutes before starting up again. The second time, I wasn’t going for time. I was just going to practice my stepping, and also to experiment with doing an occasional triple-step to try and even out the load on my legs during the main portion of the climb. So there I was, yakking away all the way up, describing the most efficient line to take and how to do the turns. Nick said he could hear me talking, but that in his stair climbing fog, it sounded like the adults in the Charlie Brown cartoons. At the end, I raced up the final five floors, but when I remembered to look at my watch, it was still running. So I don’t know what my time was. My best guess is it was about 10:45 or so. Not bad for taking it easy.

By this time, Kathleen had arrived. We had a dinner date up the street at Engine Company 28, so we left to go there. Nick said he was going to go up again before going home.

A bit later, my phone chirped at me. Nick said he was going to go up a fourth time. Which led to this message exchange:

Next practice is Monday. Onward and especially, upward.

Today was the first practice climb at the 777 Tower in downtown Los Angeles. This is a pretty big building, with 52 floors plus a penthouse. It’s actually a little bit taller than the Wells Fargo building that we will be practicing in come September. This is part of the practice series organized by the downtown YMCA in preparation for the U.S. Bank Tower stair climb at the end of September.

I went downtown with Nick and Morgan from the office. I brought my notepad.

We rode the train downtown, and when we got to the building, we got signed in and ready to go. My first time up, I went slowly, taking notes along the way. The building has stamped steel stairs, seven inches high. They are all stamped steel, except for floors 33-43, where the stairs are concrete. That was odd, and I figured it would make a good landmark.

The building has a 13th floor.

It’s almost all right turns, and most floors are 23 steps, divided up in a 12/11 configuration. This is good. I can treat 12/11 as if it were 12/12, and then it makes for a nice smooth 12 steps per floor to climb it. If I start right foot first, I will hit every landing with my left foot, which is perfect for a one-step pivot turn. And I don’t have to waste any steps on the landings. The only downside is that the pattern is not perfectly balanced. The right leg is doing about 9% more work than the left. But in practice, I’ve found that that difference isn’t too noticeable.

The practice climb was only up to floor 50. The door was open there, and one of the YMCA guys was standing there directing us out to the hall.

When we got to the top, we found the elevator to come back down. I put away my notepad, put on my gloves, and I was ready to make a run for it. I started out, and Nick was tailing me up the stairs. We got all the way to about 20 before he fell off the pace. This was unfortunate, since at that point, I found it hard to maintain the pace, too. Still, I managed to keep going, and even put on a little extra at the end. At the top, I did the traditional face-plant on the 50th floor landing. When I looked at my watch, I had 8:49. I’d hoped for a bit faster than that, but really didn’t know what to expect.

After catching my breath, I noticed that there was nobody hanging around the 50th floor landing. So I walked up the remaining four flights to the roof door. I counted the steps, and also took pictures so I could add the final bit to my stair chart for the building. Turns out it’s exactly 100 steps from the 50th floor landing to the roof door. Added to the 1,138 to get to 50, the building had a total of 1,238 steps.

It was a nice outing, and now I’m ready to make the stair chart for the building, which should help for planning split times for next time.

The chart is here: http://www.1134.org/stan/Stairs/777tower-la-stairs-chart.pdf

Today was the last day for practice sessions at the Mellon Bank building in downtown Los Angeles. And this time, Morgan and I had an entourage. Her friend Chris and my friend Nick agreed to come along. On the way there, they were both saying that they only wanted to climb the building twice. I was planning on doing it at least four times, and maybe five if time allowed. Each time up was 26 stories and 580 steps.

I did the climb three times for time. The fourth I did just to go slow and practice the footwork to make the most efficient path up the stairs. My best time was 4:36, which really isn’t all that good for a building that height. But then again, I’m just coming back from several months off, so I’m out of practice. Yeah, that’s it.

In the end, Nick and Chris both climbed the building four times.

It made for an amusing, albeit painful evening.

Today was the start of stair climbing season for me. I’ve been practicing at the library at Caltech all summer, but this was my first trip downtown to climb a big building. The venue was the Mellon Bank building at 400 S. Hope St in downtown Los Angeles. It’s only 26 stories, but that’s about the same size as the building we raced in in San Diego back in June, and so I thought that this could be good practice for that event next year.

I rode the train downtown with Morgan from my office. We got signed in at the YMCA and walked across the street to the building. My first trip up the stairs was a leisurely one. I’d brought a pad and pen to make notes on the way up so I could make a map of the stairs. I didn’t time my first trip up, but I think it was about 6 minutes. At the 25th floor they had the door open and a sign directing us to the elevator for the trip down. But the stairs continued on, so we kept going up to the roof door, which was two more floors up.

On the way back down, I had a look at my notes. It was 533 steps to the 25th floor, and 580 to the roof door. Almost all of it was flights of 11 steps with right turns. This was good, since it meant that the pattern I’d worked out last spring at the Aon building would work here. So when we got to the bottom, I stashed my notepad, put on my gloves, and we headed up again.

My first timed run came in at 4:43, which works out to about 10.3 seconds per floor. I was averaging 10 seconds a floor for 56 floors at Aon practice last spring, so I think I need to get back in the swing of things. I climbed the building three more times after that, posting 5:05, 5:21, and 5:23. By the end, I was really dragging. Still, that’s not bad. The climb to the roof is an honest 26 stories, so that makes for 130 stories, 2,900 steps, and about 1,765 vertical feet.

And of course, I made a chart of the staircase: http://www.1134.org/stan/Stairs/mellon-bank-LA.pdf

We’ll be heading back there on Wednesday to do it again. And then next week, we move to the 777 Tower, which is 52 stories. Good times.

Today was a new adventure. We’ve gone to San Diego twice now for the Lung Association stair climb, and that’s been fun. But it’s been mostly an excuse for a weekend in San Diego and to visit my father. At 31 stories, the climb itself just isn’t all that hard. But this weekend was the first San Diego Towerthon. This was a stair climb up Columbia Center in San Diego. We were only going to climb up to the 25th floor, but this time, the race was to see how many times we could do that in two hours. This sounded both insane and intriguing to me. After all, back in my bike racing days, I always did better in longer races than I did in short ones. So I thought this would be an interesting experience.

The climb was early on Saturday, which made it difficult to plan to come down that morning. So I hitched a ride with some of my other stair climbing friends on Friday and spent the night at one of the guest rooms at my father’s place. In the morning, I took the bus to the trolley, and rode the train downtown. This was my first time riding the San Diego train, and it was really quite pleasant.

When I got to the building, I checked in and got changed. Then we lined up, and they sent us into the stairs. They had timing mats in the entrance and at the top, and the computer was going to time each of our climbs up the building, and we had two hours to climb, starting from the time when we first stepped on the starting line mat. When it was my turn, I started my stopwatch and headed up.

At the top, we came out in the hallway on the 25th floor. There were volunteers handing out bottles of water and towels. Then they had other volunteers operating the bank of six elevators doing a continuous shuttle from 25 down to the lobby. That worked out well, and we never had to wait more than 20-30 seconds for an elevator for the trip down. One of the elevator operators was a priest, and when he had a look at us, he reminded us that he was qualified to perform last rites, just in case any of us needed that service.

I’d planned on being conservative and taking about 6 minutes to climb the building. But that turned out to be too slow. In the end, I averaged about 5 minutes each time, and in retrospect, I think I could have gone faster. After all, look at the picture. I’m smiling. So that definitely means I could have been going faster.

In the end, I climbed the building 17 times. I was pleasantly surprised by that, since I’d thought I’d only be able to do something like 15 at the most. The stairway was very consistent, and I was able to adapt the stepping pattern I’d worked out at the Aon building last spring to find the minimum-steps method to climb. And because I went up it so many times, I was able to make a chart of it to add to my collection. Sadly, it’s pretty competitive in the over-50 age bracket, and the overall winner, with 21 climbs, was Michael, who’s in the first picture. And I was fourth in my age group. The number three guy also did 17 climbs, but he did them a little bit faster than I did, so he got the medal. But that’s all right. I still got a medal for being part of the West Coast Labels/X-GYM group, which was by far the fastest team there.

After the race was over, I met up with Kathleen and Lucinda. The drove down in my car. We went and checked into our hotel for the night, and that was when I realized that I’d developed a huge blister on my left thumb from swinging around all the left turns on the stair landings. Ow. And also, I thought it was funny that our room number was 408, which is also the exact number of floors I climbed that morning:

Climbing from 1 to 25 = 24 floors;
17 x 24 = 408

What are the odds?

The 408 floors add up to 8,602 steps. That times 7 inches per step means the total climb I did was just a bit over 5,000 feet. Yikes.

Results are here: http://www.geminitiming.com/posts/san-diego-towerthon-2/

I also made a graph of how many runners did how many climbs. The bars represent the number of people who went up N times. The far left bar is the 26 people who climbed it once. And the far right bar is Michael, who climbed it 21 times. I’m fairly pleased to be pretty far out on the tail on the right-hand side of the graph: