We have a new one-week record for number of stairs ran in the Bunker Hill Monument

Tuesday 9/22/26

I'd mentioned last week in these pages that I was trying to do something and would see how that went before venturing into much--or any--detail. Otherwise, no reason to talk about that which had been mooted. I had a birthday, and I try and go pretty hard on that day in both my work and in fitness matters. I've also had a goal before this year is out in having a week of stairs in the Bunker Hill Monument in which I did ten circuits each of the five days it's open from Wednesday to Sunday, which I believe I've done one other time, setting the record at fifty circuits in a five-day week.

Then I thought, okay, you're aiming to have this big day, it's getting later in the year, the hours are about to revert back to the late and less convenient start, the weather is becoming favorable, let's see if we can't have a sixty-circuit week, and that'll be the new record and the number that is then sought to be matched from time to time in the future. I have to cap these things, you see, or else I'll be in there always trying to add on. For instance, I made a rule that the most I will do in a single day is twenty circuits. It's necessary to save myself from myself and my competitiveness including with myself. Twenty is plenty. Then, I seek to tie it on occasion.

As I wrote, I did ten circuits in the Monument on Wednesday, then gutted through twenty on Thursday, which was most humid. That put me at the halfway point, something I mulled on Friday as I walked across the Bill Russell bridge in returning to the Monument. You've done all those stairs, and then you think you have just as many in front of you. It's a strange sensation. I did ten more circuits that day, in addition to 100 push-ups, and walking six miles. Then on each day of the weekend I walked three miles, did 100 push-ups, and ran ten circuits of stairs in the Monument, bringing me to sixty for the week, which is 36,000 stairs.

This isn't as roseate as it sounds. My pace wasn't good. I should be completing these circuits faster than I have been. True, it got to a stage where I just said to myself, "Okay, throw pace out the window for now, defenestrate the idea of it, let's just hit the numbers and worry about quality later on." But there is much room for improvement.

The humidity dropped each day after Thursday, which was a help. How hard is it do do sixty circuits in a week? It isn't as impressive as it seems. Not if stair running is something you regularly do and are committed to. That's most of it, really--be out there every day, or most days. That is the hard part.

Sure, if you don't run stairs and you show up at the Monument thinking you'll do three circuits, you're going to be disabused of that notion awfully fast. I mean once you get up to speed, so to speak. I'd maintain this takes more mental discipline than any other workout. It takes more from within. I believe that a lot of people can be daily runners, but very few have it in them to run up and down thousands of stairs every day.

Don't have any pain or discomfort to report. Didn't have any cramping. Had the pickle juice ready, but wasn't put to use. You want to feel as if you hadn't done anything at all, and that's how I felt. If you aren't running stairs and respecting the process, respecting their unchanging nature and your mutable nature, you won't. I see these stairs and think each time I do--and even when I'm away from them--about the challenge they pose to me.

I don't just mean physically. I need to be physically strong on account of what my life has been, what I'm trying to do in and for this world, and the time I need to have left to keep trying, and if and when things ever change for me. I could let go of the rope and be drastically weakened. I could let go of the rope and be dead. It would happen fast, given the state of my life, my prospects, this existence that is worse than being in hell, this isolation, this complete absence of hope.

Those stairs serve as granitic reminder that I must keep my grip and do everything I can not to let my grip weaken. Because if I don't, I'll fall. These stairs won't "worsen." They won't weaken. They stay the same. I must do my best to be my best. To match them in this sense. To be right there with them. I don't want to see these same stairs, feel these same stairs beneath my feet, and have to say, "I can't go up and down anymore as I once did." Stairs for me are about something far beyond stairs. Different stairs, you could say.

So I got that done and wanted to note it in this record before tomorrow, which is when the Monument opens back up again for another week. Sunday also marked 3717 days, or 531 weeks, without a drink.