twice up the staircase

It kicked my ass, but after a delay of a couple days, I climbed my building's staircase from B1 to 26 twice last night. The only rest came when I hit 26 and took the elevator back down to B1. It takes a bit longer than ten minutes—at least the first time—to climb to the top of my building; I'm slower the second time around, but I don't know how slow. At a guess, it takes maybe 12 minutes to do the second bit of stair-climbing. 

I like doing stairs for what it does to my heart rate, which skyrockets from the effort. There's also the benefit to the lungs, which get their own exercise; I sound like a wheezing pervert by the time I'm halfway up the stairs the first time around (also, the staircase is echo-y and magnifies sounds). It doesn't take me too long to recover from such a workout, luckily, and I'm hoping that the move to two staircases will help bring down my BP and resting heart rate.

Come next year, though, I'm thinking I'll revert to doing only 1.5 staircases. I avoided doing two staircases earlier this week because, well, my body and mind just balked at the thought of the task. Two staircases means 52 floors straight (and some of those floors are double-length), with rest only between staircases. My recent walk showed that I can get into great cardiovascular condition on a 1.5-staircase regimen, and psychologically speaking, doing 1.5 staircases is a lot easier than doing two (I'm supposed to get up to three staircases by the end of this year). So dropping back to 1.5 staircases, next year, feels like the right thing to do. I'm not training for the Olympics; I'm simply trying to find my way toward normal.

Next year, I'll introduce new difficulties by trying to climb the steps two at a time, and also by wearing a weight vest, starting at 5 kg and eventually getting up to the vest's full 20 kg. Both of these progressions will help increase my strength, which is good because my leg muscles are still pretty weak. I have to say, though, that if I had the room, I'd buy one of those tall step boxes to use in my studio. Alas, my studio is running out of floor space and storage space.

Jump rope this weekend (I neglected to do it last week because I jogged a good portion of the route to Bundang on Saturday). 100 reps. If I increase by 50 reps per week until I hit 1,000 reps, that'll take 19 weeks, after which I'll either switch to timing myself instead of counting reps, or I'll just stay at 1,000 reps, assuming that takes a while. Eventually, I hope to get to a point where I can do nifty boxer stuff like double-unders and crossovers.

Lots to do, lots to think about. And life is short.