Well! Today was a stairwell day. I made it up from B1 to 26 once, then I went down and huffed my way up to the third floor. Keep in mind that, in my building, the first five floors are generally taller than all the remaining floors going up. So here are the numbers:
Everest's height: 8848 m
Distance climbed today: 100.57 m
Altitude reached today: 329.5 m
Height remaining: 8848 m - 329.5 m = 8518.5 m
I've come to realize that doing my long creekside walk on the same day that I'm going to the gym is stupid: since my staircase ascents are so brief, by comparison, it's better to move my gym days over to my staircase days to balance out my schedule. This will allow me to wake up an hour later on my creekside days. God knows I need the sleep: I still have trouble going to sleep early, and now that I'm forcing myself to wake up so early, I'm losing sleep because I still go to sleep well after midnight.
So, for now: the new schedule will be gym + staircase on Tuesdays and Thursdays (TR), with a third gym day on Saturday; creekside walks will remain on Mondays, Wednesdays, and Fridays. Jump rope will remain a weekend thing, although bodyweight/calisthenics might lose its Saturday time slot, leaving only Sunday. Hmmm. As summer continues, I'll switch to a nighttime schedule, which will also mean switching my lone meal to breakfast instead of lunch, which is what I currently eat.
A commenter suggested removing some of the weight from my weight vest as a way to prevent potential injury and keep myself from overdoing this exercise. I'm pondering taking that advice, as Everesting can technically be done with as little as 10 kg of weight in the vest without sacrificing the vérité element (the Everest guy wrote that climbers carry 20-30 pounds; 10 kg is 22 lbs.). I'm attached to my current 16 kg, though, because that accurately simulates my backpack's weight from my recent cross-country walk.
The disanalogy, however, is that my long walk was mostly on flat ground: I'd say it was 80%-90% level (a term that includes "negligibly hilly"). What I'm doing now is nothing like my long walk, so there's no reason to cling to that image, no reason to be attached to a particular backpack weight. So, yeah... I'm slowly convincing myself that I should reduce the vest's weight to 10 kilos... which is what my building's concierge also suggested when he told me I'd gotten my weight-vest shipment.
One last thought: I did 29 floors today, but when I stopped, I stopped deliberately, before I was actually exhausted. I could have continued, at least to the sixth floor (where I live), so that may be what I do next time. Eventually, I'll be up to ascending my building's staircase twice, then maybe even three times. Right now, though, that feels like a distant goal because, with the weight vest on, this is as much a strength exercise as it is a cardio one. I haven't added a leg day to my gym workouts for that very reason: every single step up my building's staircase feels like a miniature leg press. I realize I'm not getting full range of motion, so I'll be adding squats to my repertoire, but I'm not feeling any urgent need to do squats.*
*Yes, I realize that squats work more than the legs. Run along, now, child.
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