The Stairs

You may or may not have noticed the little rabbit hopping along in the tall green grass there on the left hand side of my blog. I put that there to keep track of how many stairs I'm climbing.

But why is it there?

Well there is an answer and an explanation:

Answer - I'm a nerd and I like to track things.
Explanation - Without all of the long winded details, I'm backpacking to the bottom of the Grand Canyon next year.

*GASP* "That's a big deal Sarah... are you sure you can? I mean, I'm sure you can but you're going to have to work for it you know."

Yes I know. Hence the stairs.

Anyway, so the plan is this, I work up to walking 3000 stairs (up and back down again) 3 days per week. That's 9000 steps in one week. Huge, I know. Pretty scary really and I'm not looking to beat myself up if I never reach that many, however, you have to start somewhere.

So I started with 1 set of the 6 flights in my building PLUS 2 sets of 4 flights (because I work on the 4th floor).

The routine goes like this, 4 up in the morning, 4 down at lunch, for back up after lunch then 4 down again when work is done. Those are given. No matter what, I'll do 8 flights every single day.

Now the build up comes in on adding in the 6 flight routines. Last week I just put in 1 set of 6 for 3 days. This week I'm doing 2 sets of 6 for 3 days. Next week I'll add in one more and do 3 sets of 6 for 3 days.

The number on the cute little rabbit counter represents 1 day's worth of stair stepping for each week. So I'll update it weekly. As you can see it is at 384 now. That's how many steps 6 flights + 4 flights + 4 flights equal. Have I bored you yet?

Except for a couple of weeks that repeat the pattern (such as 6 sets of 6 for 2 weeks) I'll be adding one set every week. The plan is to be at 3000 by the end of March 2009. That's the earliest we can go. We may go in October '09. But if we go in March, I'll be ready.

Step, step, step, step, step. It’s hard but when I'm climbing and sweating and huffing and puffing and I think "Holy crap!" I envision the Canyon and think, "Oh this is so worth it."

Plus my ass is gonna be like POW!