Epilogue

Six years later.
In 2012 we got a puppy who liked to get underfoot, especially on the stairs, and whose litterbox raiding and wastepaper basket raiding necessitated the placement of baby-gates on the stairs. Around the same time I developed an interest in long-distance walking so the focus of my exercise time gradually moved away from stair-climbing until I hardly did it all anymore.
Yet, the original "Everest in my house" concept refused to let go of me. It was always there somewhere in the back of my mind. Year after year it continued to feel like unfinished business.

Then finally last week I did it, albeit in an altered form. This now is the full story:

http://terraarcadia.blogspot.ca/2017/03/a-donkey-sack-of-gummi-bears-and-mt.html

And that concludes this blog. Thank you so much for reading and coming along on this odd journey with me.

"This world is but a canvas for our imagination"
- Thoreau

"I like nonsense; it wakes up the brain cells."
-Dr. Seuss

Ben Nevis

I hadn't been planning to do this. I had been planning on cycling in Belgium, France and England, but then Lorraine became ill and I had to cancel that trip at the last minute. Suddenly flush with time, the notion began to develop in my mind that I should stair-climb another mountain. I noted that the royal wedding was slated for early last Friday morning and I further noted that Ben Nevis, Britain's highest peak, is 1328 meters from the start of the trail to the summit, which is a handy 246 circuits of my stairs. So there I was, early on Friday morning, with the sounds of the royal wedding in the background as I began to ascend the 6642 steps (and at the same time descend 6642 steps of course). This proved to be rather arduous and took the better part of four hours, in part because I went slowly at first to avoid making too much noise as everyone was still sleeping and in part because I looked in on the wedding from time to time.

When I tell people what I've been doing they look at me as if I've just declared my intention to become a competitive marathon pencil-sharpener. And this is the beauty of this project. The attraction is entirely personal. There are no bragging rights, there is no admiration, there is no fresh air, there are no spectacular views and there are no great stories to tell afterwards. There is consequently a kind of purity of endeavor about this that is appealing. Or at least this is what I tell myself... ;-)

Eiffel Tower Three Ways

It might surprise some of you to hear that stair climbing can be monotonous at times (what, it doesn't surprise you??), so to vary the routine I tried the approach suggested in this article:
http://www.theglobeandmail.com/life/health/ask-a-health-expert/ask-a-trainer/how-can-i-use-my-staircase-at-home-for-working-out/article1947908/
I did the 60 cycle Eiffel Tower climb by alternating a walk, a jog and a sprint. This was more confusing than interesting, but there are probably some benefits to interval training like that. Dunno.
Coming soon: Mt. Fuji!

One Hundred Flights

 

I haven't posted in a while because there hasn't been much of interest to report, even by the admittedly generous definition of "of interest" that I have applied in the past. I have, however, continued to stair climb and stair run and have tried to do one hundred flights at least once a week. Each of my in-house "cycles" includes two flights up (and two down of course), so one hundred flights means fifty cycles, or a little less than an Eiffel Tower. I hope to do Mt Fuji within the next month or so and then Everest by the summer....

Racing

This stair climbing project has been a somewhat lonely endeavor. This doesn't bother me, but it did lead me to wonder at times whether I was the only person doing this. Well, it turns out I am not. Sort of. read on:

http://www.nytimes.com/2011/01/31/sports/31staircase.html?_r=1&emc=eta1

Of course these racers are going up actual towers, not "virtual towers" within their homes, but a bit of digging on the web reveals that some actually do train in their homes. This led me to wonder, do I want to run a real race up a real tower? Maybe. The 10 minute time listed for the Empire State Building is insane. I did my Empire State Building equivalent climb today and even sprinting at my fastest it takes me 9 seconds to get up my two flights which would translate into a 10.7 minute total time. But that would be impossible for me as I can barely sustain that pace for two or three cycles, let alone the 71 needed. More realistic is my slowest time as I complete the last cycle which is 14 seconds and therefore a 16.5 minute time. Even this is questionable as I am essentially interval training by having the down run inserted every two flights. The Empire State Building apparently has some flat stretches, but the sustained up is certainly far more than in my house, so my slowest time here would be even slower there.

No matter though, winning wouldn't be the issue or the goal, but participating and surviving might be fun. Empire State? CN Tower? Hancock? I'll have to think about this...

The Year That Was and "Equipment"

2010 was a good year in many ways and specifically from a fitness standpoint it was a great year. This was the year that I began cycling to work through the coldest part of the winter, that I climbed Mt Elbert in Colorado, that I cycled from Amsterdam to Antwerp and that I began this quixotic stair climbing project. I ended the year with a 60 up-and-down cycle Eiffel Tower run and in this year I am looking forward to climbing more virtual mountains and ultimately, as the blog title suggests, the full distance from Everest base-camp to the summit in one day.

Earlier someone had asked me to post something about what equipment I use for the stair climbing. To begin with, I have a couple good quality moisture wicking t-shirts from North Face's "seven summits" series. The Everest one is pictured above and is my favorite for obvious reasons. In addition I wear running shorts and good running shoes. Most of the time. Sometimes when I am going up the stairs early in the morning I will go in bare feet as it is an old house with wooden stairs and I don't necessarily want to wake the family up with the noisy pounding of shoes.
I was also asked about hydration and such. This hasn't been intense enough yet to really require attention to electrolytes, but I will drink water copiously every hundred or so cycles and I do try to climb with only light, but fairly energy rich, foods in my stomach. I will probably have to figure out something more scientific for the Everest day, as Vesuvius did mess me up slightly... ;-)

Day Seven - Asia

This morning I got up 7:00, put on my shorts and t-shirt and began ascending the tallest structure on earth. The Burj Khalifa ("Caliph's Tower") in Dubai has accumulated just about every superlative possible for a man-made structure and is taller by a good measure than any other building, structure or tower, supported or not. It has the fastest elevators, the highest swimming pool, the highest bar, the highest residence, the most potential occupants (30,000 apparently) and so on. It's 828 metres to the top of the spire, or 153 cycles up and down my stairs. That's 4131 steps each way. The top floor is quite a bit lower than 828m as there is a long pointy spire at the top, but I've generally been using the stated highest point of a building for my calculations.
It took me just under two hours. I kept the pace modest to be gentler on my knees and this seems to have worked as they feel fine now.
So that's the tallest skyscraper on each continent in seven days... An odd little achievement.
Speaking of odd little achievements, last night Lorraine and I went to a Weakerthans concert that promised to feature one of their four albums. They have been performing an album a night at a different venue every night. Last night though the lead singer, John K Samson, declared that they would play through every song on all four of their albums in one marathon session. And so they did. 49 songs and three and a half hours later they were through. It was an incredible experience and, as I say, kind of an odd little achievement. It's got nothing otherwise to do with my stair climbing project, but it was much on my mind as I climbed this morning.