Fight or Flight

I once spent $350 on a gym visit. I paid for a year and went once. There are reasons why I hate LA Fitness, Bally's and the like. Here's a few of them: Men in little Richard Simmons-style shorts thundering on the treadmill next to me. Women vigorously soaping their private parts in the curtainless showers. Little lagoons of other people's sweat on the Nautilus machines....eww, eww, eww. Now that I look at these reasons, I not only feel guilt free about my lack of gym membership, I feel vindicated.

This is not to say that I'm lying on the couch watching Wheel of Fortune and plowing my way through bags of Jalapeno Cheetos. I just prefer more holistic forms of exercise. As mentioned, I walk the mile and a half to and from work most days. During my lunch hour I either walk the mini mountain that is downtown Tacoma's streets (from downtown to the appropriately named Hilltop), and / or I climb stairs.

There is something zen-like about climbing stairs. Real stairs, not hamster-cage machine stairs. My new trick is to pretend my building does not have an elevator.I did the 11 flights (12 actually, from the basement) twice today. Eleven or twelve flights at a time is my current comfort level. I have a moment of "Ugh, this sucks" after bounding up the first 6 or 7, but I push through it. Next week I am going to walk the 17 flights in my office building in less than 10 minutes. I'm pretty sure I can do it in about 6.

You. Yeah you, the one who's saying "Big deal. I run up and down my building's 47 flights of stairs two or three times before leaving for my 90 minute workout in which I run 13 miles in 11 minutes on the treadmill set at a 14% grade..." I'm not listening to you. Nor am I competing with you. I am competing with myself. And in a few more months, I am going to be looking fierce.