Well-ness continued.<\/p>\n
Ok, it happened…the “I worked late, blew out my schedule, have a meeting to go to later, don’t have time to go to the gym for an hour-plus and anything less than that is a waste of time” argument.\u00a0 (still with me?)\u00a0<\/p>\n
My gym bag sat limply under my desk.\u00a0 I knew it held everything I needed to get motivated:\u00a0 tunes, sneaks, cool tech fabric pants that make you fitter just by putting them on.\u00a0 And then I remembered – it was in front of me the whole time – stair climbing!\u00a0 For some reason I hadn’t given much thought to stair practice, (really<\/em>, missy?\u00a0 really<\/em>?) despite those fantastic email reminders from the local American Lung Association stair climb coordinator.\u00a0 After some hesitation and a little encouragement from co-workers,\u00a0 I went to change my\u00a0clothes<\/span> attitude.<\/p>\n Apparently I’m that rare bird who enjoys the treadmill.\u00a0 This goes to my cold weather avoidance training strategy.\u00a0 But 30 minutes on a treadmill just doesn’t do it for me anymore.\u00a0 30 minutes in a stairwell?\u00a0 Very effective – but not exactly appealing.\u00a0 The view is limited.\u00a0 The gum is abundant.\u00a0 I try not to think about what gifts are embedded on the handrails.<\/p>\n I entered the stairs at the 15th floor and went up to the boiler room – 26th floor.\u00a0 Then back down to the first floor, and up to the top three more times.\u00a0 That’s 93 floors!\u00a0 183 flights!\u00a0 1,830 stairs!\u00a0 I was feeling pretty spry the first 15 up, and the entire first 26 down.\u00a0 Round two was…ok.\u00a0 Round three I was crying.\u00a0 My enthusiasm and energy waned as the lactic acid in my quads waxed.\u00a0 Seriously, I wanted to quit almost as much as I wanted to throw up<\/span> a lot.<\/p>\n The thing about stair climbing is no matter how often I practice, I don’t ever feel like I’m improving.\u00a0 So you really have to reach deep into your bag of mental toughness.\u00a0 Listen, I know I’m never gonna be very fast, very slim or very skilled at walking past a glass of wine and a side of cheese.\u00a0 I just want to get to the top of the stairs and look dignified doing it.\u00a0 And maybe defy gravity in my 48th year.\u00a0 And maybe earn some bragging rights.<\/p>\n Not sure if stair climbing is for you?\u00a0 Well, if you don’t have much time, climb a few flights – the health benefit is terrific for the short amount of time you have to devote to it.\u00a0 You don’t need special equipment – most any sensible shoe will do.\u00a0 Drink a lot of water, bring a friend, play some tunes…give it a try. Stair climbing gives you a little more bang for your buck because of the vertical component.<\/p>\n “People who know these things”\u00a0* say\u00a0that walking up stairs at a moderate intensity should burn 5 calories a minute for a 120-pound person, 7 for a 150-pound person, and 9 for a 180-pound person. Running stairs multiplies the caloric burn and the cardiovascular benefit.<\/p>\n *people who know these things is shorthand for I can’t remember the site I copied that from, my apologies to the stair climbing scientist who probably spent years measuring stats from sweaty people\u00a0on ugly staircases.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Well-ness continued. Ok, it happened…the “I worked late, blew out my schedule, have a meeting to go to later, don’t have time to go to the gym for an hour-plus and anything less than that is a waste of time” argument.\u00a0 (still with me?)\u00a0<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":24,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[15],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-810","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-goals-and-motivation"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p6ZZxW-d4","_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/hnetalk.com\/home\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/810","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/hnetalk.com\/home\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/hnetalk.com\/home\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/hnetalk.com\/home\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/24"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/hnetalk.com\/home\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=810"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"http:\/\/hnetalk.com\/home\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/810\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/hnetalk.com\/home\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=810"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/hnetalk.com\/home\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=810"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/hnetalk.com\/home\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=810"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}