Week 1, day 3
Climbing the same staircase with a loaded pack
Dear climber,
Every Tuesday and Thursday I climb the same staircase in an ordinary office building, with a pack on my back and a thermos in the side pocket. There are twenty-two floors. By now the people at the front desk have stopped asking what I am doing.
Here is what I do not say in the post. The staircase is not hard because it is steep. It is hard because it is always the same, and it does not let you pretend. By the tenth floor you know whether you started too fast, and by the sixteenth you know whether your breathing is something you chose or something that happened to you.
I load the pack in steps. Week one is empty. Week four is a quarter of the weight I plan to carry on the real day. By week ten it is the full weight, and I climb fewer floors, not more. I add weight or floors, never both in the same week.
A reader wrote that she cannot find a long staircase. Any one will do. Climb a short one many times and count in sets of five. What matters is that the time on your legs adds up and that your pace stays the same from the first set to the last.
If you are training for a first season, start with the stairs and an empty pack this week. Next week I will write about how to plan a day on paper before you climb it, because the legs are only half of pacing.
