Blow that whistle: Record-tying stair-running performance in the Bunker Hill Monument

Thursday 1/8/26

Back when I first began running stairs in the 294-stair Bunker Hill Monument in 2016, I'd kind of just go over to Charlestown and, well, go up. That seemed like something. After all, it was a lot of stairs to the top, if you don't think in terms of what a lot of stairs is, or have much experience with big numbers of stairs.

I was walking over there one time and when I was between the ball field on Atlantic and the skating rink closer to the bridge, I texted someone saying I planned to try and go up the Monument a second time. I honestly didn't know how feasible this was. If it was something you could do or it was too much. I figured I could, but it'd be hard, though I'd live to tell the tale.

It's funny, isn't it, what we don't know until we know it. Considering how well we come to know what we do.

That day, that excited text, was on my mind a little bit yesterday when I was in the Bunker Hill Monument running my stairs. I hadn't been doing a great job stair-wise in 2026. I've been saddled with some computer issues pertaining to the Cloud and haven't been able to work for the past several days.

Each day I'm on the phone with Apple trying to resolve the problem. Then the next part of the process takes however many hours--or a full day--and I'm just waiting for that to be done. It's thrown me off with everything. But that's also on me. I should be doing much more and much better.

I ran ten circuits of stairs in the Monument on January 2, and then five the next day, and that was it until yesterday. The Monument is closed on Monday and Tuesday so it's not like I had a choice then anyway. But I wanted to have a good day yesterday. Legs were fresh. There's this balance between being in shape and fresh legs that happens when it's been two or three days since you've run stairs in the Monument but you've also not backslid in your conditioning.

The weather was pretty good, too--about thirty-seven degrees. I say "pretty" good because everything was very slippery in Boston yesterday. One of those days when you are out walking and taking a spill or nearly do a bunch of times. A misty day, a sometimes (briefly) snowy day. Slick moisture and ice.

I got to Charlestown, took off my Bunker Hill Monument fleece and my BC sweatshirt, stuffed them between the spikes of a fence just outside the Monument door, and started having at it. Had to be careful, especially near the top. It's warmer up there. You definitely feel the change in temperature from the bottom to the top and vice versa as you do these reps. Heat rises.

I'm not cocky in the Monument. Whenever possible--that is, if I'm not having to go around someone--I keep my hand on the railing all the way coming down. I don't assume that because I do this so much I'm less likely to trip. I made sure to be safe yesterday. There were these stretches where it was just me. Fifteen straight minutes with no one else inside the obelisk.

This amazing thing happens as I go along. I settle into this pace, this pattern of breathing, this depth of breath. Regulated, easy, calm. It's a kind of oneness, I'd say. Which sounds strange, but that's how it goes for me and what it is. It's almost as if I fight it a bit on the first trip up. I'm not in this synch yet. But once I am, it's like the deepest form of sleep, but with wakefulness, if that makes sense. Of wakefulness.

I had a number in mind for yesterday of twelve circuits. Someone had asked me how many "loops" I was doing, to which I responded, "Hopefully at least twelve." I find that it helps to break it down into groups of five.

You get the first five done--and five is a nice number, it's a good workout--and then it gets easier if you want to keep going because now you're in the bonus, almost. You got the foundational work out of the way. Now you can add on. You get to ten, and if you want to keep going, it's the same idea. You get to fifteen...you follow me.

I felt strong and fit. There was no question when I got to twelve that I was going to stop. I don't go until I can't. This is a lot of time, and I have things to do. I run these stairs for one reason: So that I may be strong enough to endure this life of mine that is worse right now than being in hell, and endure the evils of publishing industry and the terrible people of it, so that I may ultimately prevail and get where I am going, in terms of reaching the world, impacting the world, and being where I wish to be in the world in every sense of that phrase.

It's like training to play a sport or for the military. Otherwise, I'd be dead. Publishing and these people would have killed me. My body would have given out, my heart would have failed. A person can't understand the level of devotion and commitment I have, in all phases of my existence, because they know of nothing like this in their own lives. That's not me boasting. It's just the truth. It's an entirely different way of being.

And you could also add that because my life has been awful for its duration, I will need the years in the second half, or what would be the back end for others, in terms of volume, to make up for that, should I ever get what I deserve in all the aspects of my life. I want the longest of possible runs with those things. I wouldn't intend to die at eighty-three or ninety-three. Thus, right now, I make the choices and live by them, without a single exception or sidestep, that put me in better position to realize these things. Again, if anything--which would need to be everything--actually ever changes.

It's like when I gave up alcohol about nine-and-a-half years ago. That was because of publishing and the evil people within it. Had I not given up alcohol, the combination of the drink and those people would have resulted in me dying of a heart attack. I was well on my way, as multiple ER visits attested. About two years ago, I gave up red meat, pizza, and bread, among others things. I eat kale. And a little bit more, but not much. The way I live isn't a way anyone else does or could. I'm talking now about the parts I can control at present.

I make these choices for my art, which is ultimately for the world. But if I'm not here, and not here to keep creating, and keep fighting to overcome evil, mechanized forces, and so much more, and get that work to the world, somehow, where it can do what it's meant to do, then it will be like that work never happened, isn't there, unless something occurred through whatever means without me being around to try and work on that work's behalf.

And though it feels like there's next to nothing I can do, and actually nothing, considering all that is against me, I still prefer to have an active hand, rather than just looking on from the beyond, if that's how that even works. I've said recently that maybe I would have to die, like I'm the obstacle, or an obstacle, and my death would free things up. I think that could be true. But I don't know. So in the meanwhile, I try. I try hard.

As soon as I started ascending the Monument again for the thirteenth time, I knew I'd be tying the record of twenty circuits. The Monument has been open since 1843. The most amount of times anyone has gone up and down in a single session is twenty. I am the only person who has done that. It's two-and-a-half straight hours of stair running. You would need to train, as one trains for a marathon, to be able to do this.

On the sixteenth time up yesterday I began to feel it a bit in the legs. Funny thing about Monument stair circuits. You do it ten times, twelve times, thirteen times, you're fine after. What do I mean by fine? For me, that means no cramping later that night. I never have any pain. Joints and muscles don't ache. But if I go all the way to twenty, sometimes I have cramping that evening. Not every time.

But it was on that sixteenth time up yesterday that I thought I had some cramping issues awaiting me later on. I actually have a jar of pickles in the event of cramping. I'm prepared. On I went and it was fine and I felt good all the way through.

This is the seventh time I've done twenty circuits of stairs in the Bunker Hill Monument, with four of those times occurring in the second half of last year (the Monument, of course, was closed for October and the first half of November), and the third time since my birthday in September. The most recent time was the day after Christmas.

I had gone years between times two and three. Because, again, you're not really there to match records. You're there to do a good job. If you do a good job, then yes, you could go for the record on any given day and reach it. Why do I cap myself at twenty? Practicality. There is no one more competitive than I about the things I care about.

For instance, with writing, I don't want to be your buddy or your fellow literary citizen. I'm the opposite of someone like ex-Tin House editor Rob Spillman, someone for whom everything they've ever had or been given is the result of cronyism, of quid pro quo, of being the same kind of mediocrity as someone else and like so many others, of being achievable, a guy who actually has "literary citizen" in his Facebook bio, and who promulgates this culture, this mindset, and demands that anyone else be as lacking in talent and character to be put forward, published, hyped, supported, touted, awarded, included by the fellow members of the sinecure.

I want to obliterate you. I want you to see what I do and question ever writing again. Hell, get out of bed again. Eradicate you. Turn you into sobbing atoms. I'm not into reach arounds and circle jerks. Let's line up, someone blows the whistle, and we'll have at, skill against skill. I can see why no one else would want it to to be this way, but I'd love it. Shakespeare, Keats. Everyone from history. Level playing field. He who is best wins. Blow that whistle, motherfucker.

If I didn't cap myself, I'd do twenty-one, then twenty-two another time, and so on, because I refuse to backslide or level off unless I've preemptively capped myself to, in this case, protect myself from myself, I guess you could say. Twenty is fine. Twenty is a number no one else could reach.

So twenty it is. Plus, the Monument is only open for a few hours every day. But if it never closed, and I didn't cap myself, I'd be in there for like a straight week at some point. Instead of Charlie on the MTA you'd have Colin in the Bunker Hill Monument. And that just wouldn't be practical with everything else I must do.

Yesterday I also did my 100 push-ups and walked five miles. Remember what I was saying yesterday about the idea of achievable as pertains to a David Remnick or that woman who took to social media and bragged about how proud of herself that she was for walking for an hour.

How do you think it would go--or how do you think it did go--if I mentioned some of this--not even all of it--on social media? Zero likes, right? Because even this--this side thing I do that is in service to these much bigger things--renders me as not achievable. And that is a very bad thing in our society at present.

But yeah. Blow that whistle. What I wouldn't do for that to be the way it was. No cramps, by the way.