10.25mi. Google must know better than Stairmaster how many miles are covered by going up stairs. I have a big race in 3 weeks. I need to condition my legs for up and down travel. I went to the gym, hopped on the Stairmaster and set it to the max 99 minutes of exercise. On a scale of 1-20, I chose 11 for difficulty, thinking that much of my uphill trekking in Atlanta should be my Galloway-like walk/run intervals. Yes, that.
There is now real moving air in a gym, so wisely I brought a towel. I learned that stringing the towel across the arm rails allowed it to be on both sides for me to drip on via my elbow sweat. This also put towel across the front of my face like a cotton sweat absorbing hammock. I sweat considerably even though I wasn’t sprinting or going fast at any point in the hour and a half on the machine. The intensity varied throughout the session, from 72 steps per minute up to 95 steps per minute. I did sometimes think I was going to fall off the machine, either climbing too fast and having my feet get caught up in the mechanism that fed the stairs to me, or going to slow and getting spit onto the floor. Neither occurred, but I had to concentrate to stay on the stairs. My one bottle of half G2 half water was gone with 20 minutes to go… this is to be expected, I should have hydrated better prior to going at 5:45 am. It was a good exercise and I’ll see its effects on my legs when I run at Dyer Park tonight.
Google led me to several references to 20 flights of stairs = 1 mile. Stairmaster said that I did 99 minutes, 495 flights of stairs and 10.25 miles.
drun4fun 