Climbing Stairs

My friend inadvertently helped me understand one of the best ways to seek better fitness: find partners.

Not just one, but several.

My husband is my weight-lifting partner. Kimberly is my stair-climbing partner. Barb is my dog-walking, day-tripping, and bike-riding partner. Plus I have a whole dieting support network of my weight loss challenge team (which includes my husband and Barb) plus several other colleagues (participating on competing teams) who also are trying to lose weight and become better fit. There are several friends, including my sister, who share good low-fat or healthful recipes and other healthy living tips with me, so in a way, they're partners too.

In the opening blog in this series I mentioned the terrible feeling of climbing two flights of stairs and arriving at the top feeling winded and defeated. Now I feel like I've conquered the stairs, although I still have a long way to go. On Tuesday, I accepted Kimberly's invitation to climb the stairs with her, with some hesitation (because oh-my-god I can barely get up two flights of stairs, how in heck am I going to make it up all 12 flights?). I surprised myself -- we climbed 18 flights. And it was -- no, not exactly easy -- but very doable.

I wouldn't have believed it if you'd told me Tuesday morning that I would climb 18 flights of stairs that day.

Here's how we did it: We started on the 2nd floor for

 no other reason than that's the floor my office is on. We climbed two flights, then briskly walked around the building to catch our breath, then climbed two more flights... rinse and repeat. We did that all the way up to the 12th floor, then turned around and walked down to the basement. At that point, my legs were beginning to feel like jello, so we decided to walk up a flight, then walk around the floor, walk up another flight, etc. And we did that until the 7th floor.

I'm not a big fan of sweating -- especially not in my work outfits (dress pants and a pretty top), but it was worth it. It took close to 40 minutes, during which I could feel my heart pounding. (I was late to meeting Kimberly, so I had to race from my office to the agreed-upon meeting place, which in effect served as an excellent leg-stretching aerobic warm-up (I am so trying not to imagine what I looked like as I strode down the hallway). On the way back, I tried to stretch out my tired legs and took long strides, but slower, to cool down.

I suggested we next stair-climb on Thursday, but she challenged me: "Why not tomorrow?" Ummmm..... really I had no answer for this. Why not? So we did, even though my calves ached. And we climbed again on Thursday. And again today...  Instead of every other day, we've agreed to try to do this every day we're at work.

Which was good, because honestly, I was worried about this week's weigh-in. Valentine's Day weekend, several snow days, and a birthday dinner later, and I suddenly realized I'd consumed almost half a pizza, too much Chinese take-out, some chocolates (damn those Hersey's kisses!) and birthday cake and ice-cream. Uh oh!! What happened to that diet? (Any one of those things and no problem. All in the space of four days? That's a problem.) I needed the exercise boost to help regain my fitness/diet initiative and steady my wavering resolve (that chocolate chip cookie dough ice cream was amazingly delicious!). The new number is 209.2. (I'm trying not to think of how many more pounds I would have lost without all that indulging.)

There's room for improvement, although even after a couple of days doing this, I find myself better able to move up those stairs. Do more consecutive flights of stairs, climb them faster, climb more... That'll come, I feel confident. Next week we're aiming for three flights of stairs at a time. In time, I'll build up to Barb's ability to climb six flights at a time.

So in addition to discovering I could climb 18 flights of steps, I discovered something else: having a partner to prod and challenge me helped. It went faster because we chatted along the way. And I did more because I didn't want to totally cop out on my friend.

Finally, when I got back to my office Tuesday, my office-mate offered me a slice of very tempting peanut-butter cake, in celebration of another colleague's birthday.

After 18 floors, I simply wasn't interested (although I did say happy birthday to the colleague).

I'd love to hear what works for you on your journey to fitness -- please send me an email at daytripgal@gmail.com!

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