Cowboy Hazel

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.