Up is a Tough Direction!

So, I am supposed to add a day of stair climbing to my weekly work outs. It says one session of 10 to 20 minutes of going up and down the stairs. It (supposedly) doesn't matter if you do one long set of stairs a few times or a short set numerous times.

The first day I tried stairs I was at home. I tried walking up and down my ten stairs repeatedly. I gave up after 6 tries. I was worried I would slip on the carpet, worried I would wake everyone in my house up and I was getting dizzy from changing direction repeatedly. Granted, those are all pretty poor excuses!

The next week I tried stairs again. I headed off to my favorite trail in the river valley, schlepped myself down the nearest stairwell and used the walk to the next staircase as my warm up. I must say the idea of trying to continuously climb stairs had me very, very scared. In fact, I thought about putting some graffiti on the first step that said, "Be afraid, be very, very afraid!"

Since I had previously climbed these stairs a grand total of one time in a row, I changed my goal from 10 minutes to twice. I bravely (OK, I'm only brave in my own opinion) started up the stairs. Since I had forgotten my IPOD I started counting. When I got to 55 stairs I was less than halfway up and starting to breathe pretty hard.

The light bulb went on in my oxygen starved brain. "What if I turned around now and went down?" Perhaps that would keep my breathing under control (i.e. still happening) and I could still get the stairs done. So I did.

When I got to the bottom I turned around and went up again. Remember, my goal was twice. Well, after two trips up (and down of course) I felt like I could do some more. So...I kept going for 10 minutes.

Then I had a 5 minute "break" of walking up the trail and decided to do the whole thing over, therefore completing 20 minutes of stairs. When finished, at the bottom of course, I realized I had to climb the damn stairs I originally started at or I would be stranded at the bottom of the river valley. (Just for reference, the ambulance does not drive into the river valley paths, the EMTs have to stretcher you out of there).

Well, I made it up that last set of stairs, whereon I realized those risers were tiny and the staircase I had actually climbed was the one with the giant steps that I absolutely hated on all my previous excursions. DOH!

I did 918 stairs. Whew....(hm, maybe next week I'll try to hit 1000!)

PS. As a frame of reference, a friend of mine who has climbed Everest, spent hours climbing the stairs in Telus Tower with a pack and boots. This after a 12 hour shift working in emergency without eating anything.  Good thing I'm not that dedicated!

PPS. I'm pretty sure the mountain doesn't actually have stairs with rails to climb to the summit. Darn!