I entered my 3rd Stair Climb. The Fight For Air Climb at Presidential Towers. This one was a bit different. 4 towers, sprint between the towers, but elevator time is not included in you race time. Each tower was 47 stories, so it was an all out effort on each followed by trying to recover as much as possible. Sprint to the next one and do it again while hopefully not running over a confused resident or interrupting a snuck cigarette in the stairwell.

Once again following my no stair climb specific training plan. Not even any runs for this one as I was coming off my first ultracycling race of the year the weekend before. It seems to work for me though. Stair climbing one week after a long cycling race is a recurring habit. I climbed the Hancock Tower after racing a 24 hour race and had a good climb. This time I raced the Hill Country 600 in Texas the weekend before.

Intensity on this one is much higher. It took 4-5.5 minutes for me to do a tower, so I’d sprint up, spend a few minutes coughing at the top floor, take the elevator down, wait for my heart rate to drop to a reasonable level than try again. I thought the rest breaks would make it easier, but they made the intensity higher as well as providing time to consider the impending pain.

Overall, went pretty well. 9th place overall on this one. Now its back to bike racing