Wednesday, September 08, 2021

1.5 staircases

I did my 1.5 staircases, but it wasn't easy. I admit I dithered and delayed Tuesday night, not wanting to do the stairs. The task just seemed too daunting. Doing a single staircase is enough to leave me dripping in sweat (I don't worry about how I look; normally, it's just me in the stairwell, although I occasionally scare away some smokers looking to puff away out of sight of the building's security cameras), so imagine doing one-and-a-half staircases. 

The last time I did that many stairs was years ago, when I first began working at my current company. And now, here I am, facing 1.5 staircases again. Life is a circle, it seems. So in the end, despite the dithering, I got my ass up and did the stairs. It was about as hard as I thought it would be. I did learn something, though: it's easier to do the stairs first, then walk, than to walk first and then do the stairs. Walking on generally flat ground is easy, so save that for last. I was sweat-soaked when I finished my 38 floors' worth of stair-climbing, so even though it was lightly raining outside, I immediately went out without any rain gear to do my 70-minute walk. Why bother with a poncho when you're already soaked through?

When I initially wrote up my workout calendar, I hadn't considered the interruption of the east-coast walk. I've decided, since I'm taking a small backpack, that I'm going to bring along my resistance bands to continue training daily (except Sundays). I'll also start doing squats while I'm on the road, maybe only 50 reps per day, as a replacement for stair work, just enough to maintain strength for when I get back to Seoul and resume doing the stairs. My goal, you'll remember, is to do 3 staircases by the end of this year. At this rate, I'm going to meet all my goals except pushups and pullups, thanks to my bum shoulder. 

But there's always next year. The journey never ends.



2 comments:

John Mac said...

Good job, especially in overcoming the lack of desire to get started. I'm very impressed that you still had the motivation to walk after the climb. The mental aspect of an exercise program, ignoring that voice saying "not today", is underrated I think.

Keep up the good work!

Daniel said...

Feel (some of) your pain. Can't say I ever look forward to the stairs. But I take them anyway. Because just as Sisyphus always found his rock again at the bottom of the hill, we'll always finds ourselves at the bottom of some staircase somewhere. Just like Camus, I like to imagine Sisyphus happy.