McKinley Routine

I'm eating fresh popped popcorn and drinking a fifty dollar bottle of wine. Something is very wrong with me. Anyway.

Subsequent to Rainier I became aware that my gym routine was not entirely adequate for mountain climbing so I've decided to start climbing the stairs of my apartment building instead. And I started today.

Packs on McKinley will probably weigh between 60 - 70 pounds (plus a heavy sled in tow). My goal is to walk up and down the 60+ floors of this building in under an hour - this may be ridiculously easy or hard; I'm not sure which yet. This morning I did from my floor to the top (24 floors) with a twenty pound pack (just to gauge things). I didn't time myself. To my surprise, going up was easier than going down. Much easier. Controlling one's descent so as not to just pound your foot down with each step uses muscles that I evidently haven't been working out. So, the pack needs to increase in weight by 40 - 50 pounds and the distance needs to increase by about 40 floors and I need to average no more than thirty seconds per floor. And I have seven weeks. Should be fun. Updates will be provided.