pancakeman
New member
Insurance over there sure is expensive! I am one of three drivers, and the combined is just over $700/6 months. Strangest of all, I'm a teenager, which I thought would at least double the premiums...
Busy weekend for me, concluding with a relaxing surf of the Intertubes and then sleep. Yesterday morning I did a charity thing, the same charity that put on that amazing ride in September. The challenge was simple: Go up some stairs. More specifically, 30 stories' worth of them. We start in the parking garage underneath, then run up the crappy old staircase to the 26th floor, 30 stories in all, 618 steps. If you are having trouble picturing what that would look like, consider this.
Wall of Text™ alert, so click spoiler button to read about the event. It won't take long, but the whole thing was very unique and I wanted to do that justice.
tl;dr: Pancake ran up a very big building, then ate hot dogs. He also types too much.
Now, I am off to bed. Goodnight Bar! Put a Dew on ice for me, I'll be back for it before you know it!
Busy weekend for me, concluding with a relaxing surf of the Intertubes and then sleep. Yesterday morning I did a charity thing, the same charity that put on that amazing ride in September. The challenge was simple: Go up some stairs. More specifically, 30 stories' worth of them. We start in the parking garage underneath, then run up the crappy old staircase to the 26th floor, 30 stories in all, 618 steps. If you are having trouble picturing what that would look like, consider this.
Wall of Text™ alert, so click spoiler button to read about the event. It won't take long, but the whole thing was very unique and I wanted to do that justice.
The day started at 5:30, woke up, ate breakfast, then me and the two brothers rolled to pick up some friends and fellow ROTC squadmates of my brother's. Then downtown, into the garage, and out to register. It was about 7:45 by now, and we were practically the only ones there. It turns out everyone else had registered early, and they showed up gradually. By about 8:30, there were at least 75 runners milling around, either warming up or talking to friends who were also running. There were even two squads of firefighters, one from here and one from the neighboring city, our constant competitor. They were going to do the entire thing in full fire gear. There was a lot of waiting, then a little bit of PT (they are ROTC, after all), and then we all lined up and got psyched. This was when I whipped off my baggy shorts to shed weight. Plus, I can't let those runners think no cyclists showed up :wink:
Anyway, I was third in line, and my brother was one of the ones ahead of me. That would not do. My plan was to pace myself to begin with, but I almost sprinted into the stairwell and up the first 5 floors, two stairs at a time. Then I slowed, but was still running. At floor 10 it hit me hard, and I slowed to taking the stairs one at a time. Then at floor 14, I had to stop and catch my breath. The air was completely gone from my lungs, and worse yet I had given my brother my inhaler in case I needed it. And he was ahead of me. So I grabbed some water and took off again, driven by the thought that I had to at least catch him before I could stop. It was floor 19 when I caught sight of him, and floor 22 when I passed him. There was a volunteer there yelling at me "8 more to go!" and I realized that maybe I could do this, and if I couldn't at least my inhaler wouldn't be far behind. That gave me some steam, and I started to jog again. Floor 25 passed and I caught the first of our group, who had gone a full minute ahead of me. He was leaning heavy on the rail and walking slowly, so I slowed to get him motivated. We jogged together up the next 4, and when I saw the sign for floor 29 and heard the yelling above me I took off at the highest speed I could muster for the top. Step, step, step, step, around the corner and into a hallway filled with people. It was a little surreal, going from the isolation of the narrow stairwell into a big space. I staggered into an empty room and laid down on the floor, rolling over just in time to see two of my companions emerge from the stairs. Another came in very shortly afterward, and the last a minute or two later. Cold water. Inhaler. Pain. The legs were engulfed in searing pain, and no matter how you positioned them they hurt. The abs were cramping from being flexed the entire time, and the pain from them came in waves. The worst of it was unexpected, though: Because the air in the stairwell is pumped in from AC vents and recycled, it is very dry. This leads to a condition called dry lung, which results in coughing, difficulty breathing, and hurts like a mofo. But we were triumphant, and that was all that mattered. After laying there like a bunch of dead starfish for a while one of our group sat up and looked out a window. That is when we discovered that we were laying on the floor of the corner office, 300-something feet in the air. It was really weird. Very surreal, I guess. The whole thing was surreal: Show up, wait for two hours, eat all sorts of food, stretch, warm up, all for a 5 minute burst, all without the height of the building occurring to you. But fun.
After that, we went to take them home, but I decided to instead get something for us to eat. Recovery food is important, and besides, I was having fun. So I drove to the nearest Cook Out (a delicious burger/hot dog chain in NC) and discovered, to my dismay, that they didn't open for an hour. What followed is too long a story to type out, but it was awesome and we wound up with hot dogs. The best hot dogs I have ever eaten. Heavenly dogs. I cried a little when I ate mine. It was a good day.
Anyway, I was third in line, and my brother was one of the ones ahead of me. That would not do. My plan was to pace myself to begin with, but I almost sprinted into the stairwell and up the first 5 floors, two stairs at a time. Then I slowed, but was still running. At floor 10 it hit me hard, and I slowed to taking the stairs one at a time. Then at floor 14, I had to stop and catch my breath. The air was completely gone from my lungs, and worse yet I had given my brother my inhaler in case I needed it. And he was ahead of me. So I grabbed some water and took off again, driven by the thought that I had to at least catch him before I could stop. It was floor 19 when I caught sight of him, and floor 22 when I passed him. There was a volunteer there yelling at me "8 more to go!" and I realized that maybe I could do this, and if I couldn't at least my inhaler wouldn't be far behind. That gave me some steam, and I started to jog again. Floor 25 passed and I caught the first of our group, who had gone a full minute ahead of me. He was leaning heavy on the rail and walking slowly, so I slowed to get him motivated. We jogged together up the next 4, and when I saw the sign for floor 29 and heard the yelling above me I took off at the highest speed I could muster for the top. Step, step, step, step, around the corner and into a hallway filled with people. It was a little surreal, going from the isolation of the narrow stairwell into a big space. I staggered into an empty room and laid down on the floor, rolling over just in time to see two of my companions emerge from the stairs. Another came in very shortly afterward, and the last a minute or two later. Cold water. Inhaler. Pain. The legs were engulfed in searing pain, and no matter how you positioned them they hurt. The abs were cramping from being flexed the entire time, and the pain from them came in waves. The worst of it was unexpected, though: Because the air in the stairwell is pumped in from AC vents and recycled, it is very dry. This leads to a condition called dry lung, which results in coughing, difficulty breathing, and hurts like a mofo. But we were triumphant, and that was all that mattered. After laying there like a bunch of dead starfish for a while one of our group sat up and looked out a window. That is when we discovered that we were laying on the floor of the corner office, 300-something feet in the air. It was really weird. Very surreal, I guess. The whole thing was surreal: Show up, wait for two hours, eat all sorts of food, stretch, warm up, all for a 5 minute burst, all without the height of the building occurring to you. But fun.
After that, we went to take them home, but I decided to instead get something for us to eat. Recovery food is important, and besides, I was having fun. So I drove to the nearest Cook Out (a delicious burger/hot dog chain in NC) and discovered, to my dismay, that they didn't open for an hour. What followed is too long a story to type out, but it was awesome and we wound up with hot dogs. The best hot dogs I have ever eaten. Heavenly dogs. I cried a little when I ate mine. It was a good day.
tl;dr: Pancake ran up a very big building, then ate hot dogs. He also types too much.
Now, I am off to bed. Goodnight Bar! Put a Dew on ice for me, I'll be back for it before you know it!
. My senior year in high school we ran up 23 flights of stairs to our hotel room when on some club trip. We were all in track and figured it'd help us stay in shape since we missed some 3 or 4 practices.....yeah I can attest to the pain your legs experience. We were all in pretty excellent shape and we just collapsed in our rooms for some 10 mins after that lol.
