Queen of the stairs

Not a very inspiring training location.

Back in Melbourne, during training sessions with my brother and Nick, his business partner, I loved running the stairs. It sounds crazy, but I really enjoyed running up the 'spew stairs' at Como Park in leafy South Yarra and the less steep stairs nearby. Maybe I love stairs because they offer a great workout where you get your heart rate up quickly and you don't have to train for so long?

View from the 11th floor.

So, here in Wuxi, I am continuing to maintain my title of 'Queen of the Stairs' by running up and down the stairs in my apartment building. I began this about a month ago as part of my training for the Great Wall half marathon which is held in mid-May. The race consists of about 9km of running on the actual wall with over 1000 stairs. So, each week, I spend about 40 minutes walking and running up the stairs of the apartment building. I am up to running 120 flights - at 16 steps per flight, that is 1920 steps! The next step in my training, will be to add a run before and after my stair climbing efforts.

View from the 31st floor.

The Tan! A much nicer training location.

It's not a terribly stimulating training environment, with dark and dusty concrete stairwells that smell of cigarette smoke. I also have the added benefit of being stared at by the business men who wait in the halls for the lifts to arrive. But, with the help of my accidental purchase of a 3 CD set of 'Pumping Iron', I manage to remain motivated!

A great location for a (tough) run.

I am off to Beijing next weekend for a conference on Monday and Tuesday, so may possibly go out to the wall on the weekend for a walk that will either terrify me (how can I run 9km on this?!) or inspire me to keep training hard. Fingers crossed for this weekend that the rain will hold off so I can venture outside for another run.

So steep!