Record performance of stair-running in the Bunker Hill Monument six weeks after reopening

Saturday 12/27/25

The Bunker Hill Monument opened in 1843. It's 221 feet high and has 294 stairs. Since it opened, the most amount of times anyone has gone up and down the Monument in a continuous session is twenty times. Only one person has done that. I am that person. After yesterday, I've now done so six times, with four of those times happening in this year of 2025.

As has been noted, the Monument was closed as part of the government shutdown, which commenced on the first of October and, for the Monument, continued until November 15, which was my first day back inside. I had been running stairs at City Hall, but those stairs aren't the same, and no stairs are Monument stairs. City Hall stairs hold you, more or less, in abeyance. They'll keep you fit, but when you go back into the Monument, you won't have been where you were and you need to work back up.

But to get to a twenty-circuit day from November 15 to December 26 is pretty good. The Monument opens later now--at one o'clock, rather than ten--with its winter hours, so this is also the latest in a day that I've run twenty circuits. I usually awake and begin work between midnight and three in the morning. Yesterday I started before one o'clock. I take no food until after two PM, so to do twenty circuits of stairs in the Monument with all of that being true, you must be running on unleaded Zulu.

Twenty circuits of stairs in the Bunker Hill Monument takes about two-and-a-half hours. That's without stopping a single time. Those are the rules--my rules--and I put great stock in them. The key, I believe, is that I am in motion the entire time. However many stairs I do.

I am not allowed--as per my own decree--to do more than twenty circuits. Why? Because I am so hyper-competitive--including with myself--that I'll keep trying to set the record, and I'll be in there longer and longer, until I'm in there the entire time, so the record would be capped anyway.

This doesn't seem like a healthy pursuit to me, psychologically, so knowing myself, I decided that twenty would be my rule. Trust me: Twenty is plenty. If you don't believe me, give it a try some time and let me know how you do.

I run these stairs with the dedication and consistency that I do so that I am able to endure this life I am in right now that is worse than hell--I choose those words precisely--and not be killed by the likes of the current publishing system and the evil bigoted people within it, so that I am here to help bring about something better. It ought to be noted--as if it's not already clear--that upon waking, say, at midnight, I immediately begin work on my writing, which I do until half past twelve in the afternoon, when I depart for the Monument, without a break, of course. There are no breaks, no stoppages.

I work in my head as I walk and as I run stairs. I return back to this disaster of an apartment, and formally work some more. Eventually I go to sleep, and then a few hours later, I arise and do it again. Every single day, without exception, of my life. I must be strong in every way or else I will die, because this is otherwise too much for anyone, including even I, and that includes physically strong so my heart can withstand what I am going through and is being made to happen to me because I am me. But sure--let's give Paul Yoon a Guggenheim. He's so talented and legit. And while we're at it, how about one for his wife on the same day? Oh? Already did that? My bad. Don't you love totally credible things that happen for reasons of merit and are definitely on the up and up, no doubt about it? I sure do.

This record isn't a visual medium. It's a writing record for reading. Which is one reason why it's not image or video heavy. It's a book. A very long book--in fact--in actual fact--the longest book and sustained work of literature in history at what must be about four million words now and counting. I'll have a definitive number hopefully before too long in 2026.

I don't write things in this journal that couldn't be put on the page of a book you hold in your hands and turn the pages of. But I've said enough here that the excision of the videos I'm about to put below won't matter, though I can paste them in here all the same. They're just recent videos taken inside or just outside of the Bunker Hill Monument on three different days this December, starting first with one from yesterday when I was on my way up the obelisk for the twentieth time. Are the videos vertical or not how they're supposed to be taken or whatever? That's likely. Do I seem like someone who'd be much concerned with this kind of thing? This isn't social media. Art is what I care about.

Nice shout out to Matt Hanson's man-breasts in the third video, by the way.