Today was my first workout in preparation for the Empire State Building Run-up. I ran three miles up through Harlem into Washington Heights and to the base of a monster staircase at 155th Street. I looked up, took a big breath, and started charging. By the time I reached the top, I was about to puke, my head was dizzy, and I realized there was no way I could do even one more ascent at that speed. So, after trotting back down, I headed back up again, strong, but not sprinting. That’s not to say it was easy. I was breathing hard from half-way through the first ascent and, by the fifth or sixth, was sweating buckets even though it was only 34 degrees out. I counted the steps coming down and got 109 two different trips, so I’m sticking with that. And, I clocked the trips up on my watch so I could see the splits. Other than the first one, they were fairly consistent: 28, 38, 35, 34, 34, 34, 37, 36, 35, 37. Of course, I have no idea if those are good numbers or bad numbers. Is 34.8 seconds to run up 109 stone stairs a decent time? I have no idea.
There was a big Puerto Rican girl walking up the stairs on my last trip up. As I got closer, she took out her headphones and said, “Looks like I should be working out with you.” I smiled as much as I could and said, “It’s not fun.” After hitting the top that 10th time, my quads were shaking and I was having serious trouble getting back down the stairs without falling. That’s when I decided that I was done for today. My legs felt like spaghetti when I reached the bottom and started the run back home and I couldn’t get the pace much faster than 8:30’s. Good news is that they bounced back pretty quick after I got back home and relaxed a bit. Also, the 1,090 stairs I ran today is almost 70% of the Empire State’s 1,576. Of course, I won’t have those recovery breaks in the race, but I still have a few weeks to get in some training so I feel pretty good about where I’m at. I’m obviously not trying to win anything here, I just want to finish with a respectable time.
man! thats awesome! next time you go rock the stairs and feel like you want a workout buddy call me.
You’ve just learned the most important lesson of stair climbing: Don’t go too fast! You’ll get smacked down and squashed like a bug. I was all full of hubris when I did my first stairclimb in Cleveland 2 years ago; I went out too fast– basically running up– and was dead by the 8th floor. I was so wasted by the time I got to the top I could do little more than slump to the floor. I learned the importance of the slow, steady grind when I trained for the climb inside the RenCen. This year, if I increase my step rate by just a fraction of a second I could probably improve on my time from last year (I finished the climb in something like 10:50).
Wow. Great stair training! What else do you plan to do in preparation?
I think stairs are about it… The race is 3 weeks from yesterday, so I’m planning to do 15x the big staircase next Tuesday and 20x the following. If I can hit 20x, that will be huge — 2,180 steps is more than Empire State and will help to make up for the downhill breaks I’m having to do in training.
“Where do they go?”
“They go . . . up.”
You did well! A mate of mine trained for stair races by running up the stairs at the local hospital (about 10 floors), getting the lift down, and repeating. After a good number of ascents he’d be praying the lift was slow!
Wow! Great workout! So I’m wondering…is there like a training plan for this?
Has anyone thought about making one up…with tempo climbs, interval climbs, and long climbs?
That’s an interesting question. I’ve never seen one, but I never really looked. I imagine you could just take the elements of a running plan and convert it over easily.
[...] II I am shocked by how improved today’s stair workout was over last week’s. A week ago, 10 trips up the 110 steps* left me hardly able to walk for a couple days. Today, I did [...]