Originally Posted by
Wileyrat
I'm going to do a charity stair challenge for the Humane Society on 9-15. It will be all the stairs in the Tucson Convention Center Arena and be 1307 steps up (and down).
My wife thinks I'm nuts, and asked me how I'll train for it, and I said all I could do is ride, and do my weekly hill climb hike. I went to the gym today, and they put stair machines in since my last trip last week.....Training issue solved.
I did 1307 steps today. I'm thinking about doing 2071 on 9-11.
I have heard of stair challenges and I climb stairs quite regularly. I work in an 10 storey building, and I was up to 40 flights of 20 stairs a day, 5 days a week, for a while there.
I find stair climbing to be surprisingly helpful for cycling uphill. It really strengthens my cardiovascular system, and legs.
Right now I'm up to 10 flights, but plan on increasing that a bit next week.
A tip ... a very, very, very strong suggestion ... in other words, do this:
Climb stairs. Climb real stairs.
Cycling, hiking and using the stair machine will help you going up to some extent, but they won't do a thing for you going down.
If you do not climb real stairs up and down, you will experience the most excruciating calf pain the day after your "event" that you've ever experienced in your life.
Find real stairs and start climbing. But .... only do 5 flights up and down on the first day. If your calves are OK, then do 5 flights each day for 5 days. Then increase to 7 or 8 flights the next week.
If you want to have a preview of the potential calf pain, go ahead and do 10 or 20 flights the first day, up and down.
If you do that, don't make plans for the next day or two.