New stair frontier and compendious fitness
- 2 hours ago
- 3 min read
Tuesday 2/24/26
It may not have looked flashy, but I had a quietly great fitness performance over the weekend. One for the "Whoa, that's the kind of thing he did while he was going through all of that" record/annals.
I thought early on Saturday morning that there was a strong chance the Bunker Hill Monument would be closed for the day and it wouldn't be an option to run stairs there. As I mentioned earlier, there was also an skiing/snowboarding event at City Hall, so those stairs wouldn't be an option either, meaning I'd need to get creative.
I can always find stairs, though. Part of that is in knowing that the number of stairs in a spot doesn't matter; what does is you running up and down them. There can be 300 stairs or twelve stairs; you can get the workout you need either way. Take it from someone who knows.
It's as if I have stairs stashed all over the place, which makes sense, as I am the stair guy. What I elected to do on Saturday morning, though, was a bit different: I went to the Haymarket T stop and ran the stairs there leading back out to the surface.
I didn't know what this would be like. All stairs, as I've said, are different. No two sets of stairs are alike, even if they contain the same amount of stairs. At first, I didn't even count how many stairs there were. I just looked at the time, and figured I'd go for about fifty minutes, and count at some point so I knew what was what in the end, but that could wait. The important thing is to get started. You're up, you're down, you're up. You're sweating, you're up, you're down, you're up. Don't stop. Up, down, up.
A T employee eventually comes over and says he has a hard time walking up once and how many times do I do it? I told him I didn't know--my normal stairs were closed and so I was improvising.
I ended up doing eight-five circuits of what were thirty stairs. So that's 5100 stairs in total, right?
Good. Did my 100 push-ups, showered, and headed out for a walk. Got to be around the time the Monument normally opens, and I saw that a closure hadn't been announced. I then walked to Charlestown. I knew a storm was coming and the Monument would likely be closed for a while, and possibly until the spring. "If it's open, you really should go up a time or two."
I didn't want to get all wet again, but planned to keep the legs honest, so to speak.
Got to the Monument, and it was indeed open, so in I went. I did a circuit, then another, and what do you know--I was pretty sweaty. At that point, I figured, what the hell, let's just do this up right, so I did five circuits--a legitimate workout--to go along with what I'd done earlier in the day.
That's pretty respectable--pulling double duty like that with the two sets of stairs. I ended up walking seven miles, too.
On Sunday morning well before the dawn I returned to the Haymarket T stop for more stairs. I figured that after everything the day before, I'd be doing pretty well if I managed another eight-five circuits, so that was my goal.
I reached this goal. There was a trail of my sweat on both sides of the stairs. Right side on the way up, right side on the way down.
I did my 100 push-ups and then walked ten miles. I did walk to Charlestown again, but I had no intentions of doing the stairs in there again, as I was actually fairly presentable in jeans, flannel, pea coat, Manchester City scarf, and Patriots winter hat.
The weekend totals were 13,200 stairs, seventeen miles walked, and 200 push-ups. Sunday also marked 3507 days, or 501 weeks, without a drink.
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