A couple of years ago, I was at
Anytime Fitness, preparing for a run in the Indianapolis Mini-marathon. They
have a stepper there, and I was stepping away. One of the workers told me she
had entered a race in Indianapolis that year, not going horizontal, but going
vertical, up one of the high rise buildings in downtown Indy. I was quite
amazed. She said she loved it. At that point, it was the “in” thing with some.
I had not really heard of it.
My age checks me from doing
something silly with my body. However, my mind still can easily excite when it
comes to such matters. I have been exercising since I was around 18, and I have
not stopped. I do not intend to stop until I have to do so. It has become I enjoy
so much.
Yet, I found a mini-marathon too
much this year. I hope I can do it one more time. I have never had running a
marathon on my bucket list. 13.1 miles is plenty for me. I have also come to
realize the hazards of running. You have likely heard them as well. The beating
the body takes is one. If you run a marathon, it can become monotonous.
One article[1]
a few years ago said that some marathon runners were shifting to running up the
stairs of tall buildings. One reason is the importance of cross training. You strengthen
a different set of muscles as you train for different sports. You can actually
make yourself better in one sport by training in another.
Welcome to the sport of
professional stair climbing.
Kristin Frey (b. 1984) is a 32-year-old
environmental scientist who turned to stair climbing (also known as tower
running) after qualifying for the Boston Marathon 10 times and running a bunch
of others. She turned to vertical racing after a friend encouraged her to try
it, and she became hooked on running up the stairs instead of pounding the
pavement. Kristin is now the best female U.S. athlete in the sport and ran a
groundbreaking 24-hour endurance event in Jacksonville where she and three
fellow climbers repeatedly scrambled up the Bank of America Tower's 42 floors.
By the time they were finished, they had logged 123,480 steps and 5,880 floors
-- the equivalent of scaling Mount Everest two and a half times. She has run up
most of the tall buildings in the United States, including the Sears Tower in
Chicago and the Empire State Building.
Most of us would consider running
up 5,880 floors to be, well, insane. After all, that is what elevators are for,
right? Indeed, Kristin says that the recovery time for running all those
stairs, mostly two at a time, is longer than that of a marathon.
"Sometimes I'll feel sick for two
or three days afterwards. A few times, I've tasted blood near the top of a
race, and I've seen spots in some races when I was just five floors from the
top. Once I pass the timing mat, I usually fall and will crawl out of other
people's way, trying to catch my breath. I've stumbled when my legs are Jello-y
but have never fallen. And I've gotten blisters on my hands from grabbing the
rails, so I bought football gloves that protect the skin."
And you
thought that walking those three floors up to your office was tough.
Point is, running vertical can be
tough, but it is also a great way for all of us to achieve good health, a sense
of satisfaction and a stronger desire to keep moving. It can help us keep going
in the race of life.
The American Lung Association has
more than doubled its number of stair-climbing races in the past five years,
from 25 to 57 (many American stair climbs benefit some sort of lung or
respiratory disease).
The ALA wants to promote stair
climbing not just for these athletes but for the rest of us as well. The health
benefits from doing some vertical walking are many:
- It requires less time to achieve the same workout
intensity. For example, if you run 30 minutes a day, you could achieve the same
benefit from running stairs for 15 minutes.
- It's a total body workout, involving the legs (obviously)
and the arms since grabbing the handrails is encouraged.
- It requires no special equipment. Anyone can walk, jog or
run stairs anywhere from your office building to the library to your church.
Even a few steps a day can make a difference. You do not need to be tasting
your own blood!
Paul refers to the analogy between sports and faith, especially in II Timothy 4
and I Corinthians 9. To be in sports is to suffer and struggle in order to
attain a goal. It requires training, dedication, and commitment. It requires
giving your life and time to it. Pondering what it takes to be good in a sport
can teach us about living our faith, if we let it.
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