How many flights of stairs can you climb in less that 10 minutes?

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Londonscottish

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You've probably never wondered how many flights of stairs can you climb in less that 10 minutes but as I'm signed up for a charity run up the old NatWest Tower next week I thought I'd better find out.

And yesterday I found I could could do 47 floors in 9 mins 35 secs.

I work in the tower (now known as Tower 42) and thought I'd have a go. I spent nearly 9 months incapacitated by an achilles last year injury but as soon as that was sorted in October I signed up for February's Cancer Research 10k. I managed 10 weeks of training did OK at that for an slightly overweight 53 year old (I did it an hour).

Now I've had to change my training from plodding longer distances to VO2max stuff - running and and down hills with wrist weights, sprints and of course.....climbing stairs.

Before I was packed off to Washing DC for two weeks recently I was gradually increasing my climbs from 11 floors (to my office) to 15, 20 and 25 floor sessions. On Tuesday I did my first 35 and yesterday I did as many as I could bar two that are not easily accessible - 47 in total by my reckoning.

I did in my suit (well, minus jacket). It's a real lung buster and at the top I was breathing heavily and sweating quite a lot. So much so that a fellah I met in the lift on the way down actually asking if I was having a heart attack. LOL

Anyway, I'll do two climbs today

Why 10 minutes? It's because that what Duncan Bannatyne reckons he does it in and he's about my age so that'll do me. And targets are good. I actually hope to get nearer to 9 but we'll see.

Including my entrance fee I've raised north of £300 for Shelter which is not bad. I'm not really posting this to ask for donations and am not sure if I can on this site but if anyone does have a spare tenner burning a hole in their pocket just PM me and I can send you a link to my Just Giving page.

Otherwise please just share any stair climbing stories. I'm sure Patagonian will have done something like this. Dragging a tractor tyre as he goes LOL.
 
Look after your knees mate!

Luckily for me I didn't run intensively in my 20's a 30's and my knees are holding up fine.

What I have discovered, though, is that age has reduced the elasticity in my ligaments (and that's actually what caused my achilles injury last year).

So I've had to learn (or re-learn) various stretches and yoga moves. And remember to do them frequently. I can sometimes feel the old achilles grumbling away slightly during training but if I keep on stretching it calms down again.

Anyway, it's great to be active again and good to have a reason to train for something.
 
That sounds great! -Would love to give that a go. I imagine the first few mins are a total doddle until it hits you?

Ive always cycled and now have a dodgy knee, only really hurts when im walking down stairs rather than up.

I did a 20min non-stop YouTube work out video yesterday, buckets of sweat and totally knackered. This morning I can barely lift one of my arms though. :(
 
47 flights of stairs under 10 minutes for a 53 year old is very impressive, well done.

It might well do your knees good, with the extra strengthening, but so long as you do it up and not down!

Sent from my G3112 using Tapatalk
 
Is it worth getting a quack involved to check things over, just to be sure. It is just such an outstanding effort I'd hate to hear you did your knee in or something similar.
 
I would suggest that such an intense exercise regime at your age may not be wise particularly if you are slightly overweight. Training against targets number of stairs, Duncan Bannatyne etc etc suggests "competitive training" which always has the danger of you pushing beyond sensible limits. High impact exercise places undue strain on joints and ligaments which may accelerate wear and injury as you have already found .
How to Avoid Exercises That Age You Faster
With intense exercise the key is to limit your maximum heart rate- this drops as you age and I would suggest that monitoring your maximum heart rate is a more useful tool than counting the flights of stairs you have climbed.:dk:
Know Your Target Heart Rates for Exercise, Losing Weight and Health
 
I used to work on the south bank of the Thames kind of between hays galleria and city hall. One lunchtime a friend and I thought it would be a good idea to see if we could get over to the monument to the great fire of London on the other side of the river, have lunch, queue for tickets then climb the 312 steps to the top of the monument and be down and back in the office within an hour.

Accomplished the mission, fortunately there weren’t too many people going up at that time so managed to sprint most of the way up and down.

Can’t remember how it came about but it did seem like something out of James Bond running up to the top of a landmark in a suit.
 
Climbing a proper staircase!
Took more than ten minutes though :)
 
That sounds great! -Would love to give that a go. I imagine the first few mins are a total doddle until it hits you?

I can do a slow jog up the first 10 or so flights or take them 2 at a time and then BOOM the oxygen starvation and lactic burn kick in. After that it's just a case of stepping as fast as possible. Real athletes bound all the way up in 6 minutes or less......

Ive always cycled and now have a dodgy knee, only really hurts when im walking down stairs rather than up.

Knees are OK going up for me. When I first started, though, my glutes and calves let me know all about it the next day.

I did a 20min non-stop YouTube work out video yesterday, buckets of sweat and totally knackered. This morning I can barely lift one of my arms though. :(

Send me the link! I want to do some of that.
 
Look after your knees mate!

This is very sound advice.
In 1974, aged 20, I had a nasty motorcyle accident when a car pulled across in front of me, resulting in multiple fractures ( rebuilt by Nigel Cobb) and one thing that was damaged was my left knee.
Of all my injuries my left knee has caused me the most problems and pain. Over the latter years as you get older it has gotton worse, arthritis has set in and of late the pain has been severe.
Last week I had to go for Xrays at Northampton General, (which was very efficient, no waiting and super modern Samsung camera ). So the results came back and due to severe arthritis and deterioration I can get a new knee, which I suppose will mean being on some long waiting list.
Going down stairs is, very painful, sometimes its easier to come down backwards, and getting in and out of the car is also painful. If you have weak knees, then take appropriate measures, strap them up if you are exercising and stressing them.
Over Christmas I had been watching the Worlds Strongest Man series and was astounded at Eddie Hall lifting 500 kilos, the pressure on his knees would have been immense.
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Is it worth getting a quack involved to check things over, just to be sure. It is just such an outstanding effort I'd hate to hear you did your knee in or something similar.

I've had physios and sports injury training folks crawling all over me for most or 2017. When I was off the running I was cycling and swimming and had a personal trainer making me sweat. Once back on it I managed a 10k in 60 minutes which I thought was a bit rubbish but seems OK for my age. I've spent 7 years regularly cycling to work and my resting heart rate averages 52 over the last 12 months and 51 over the last 3. I've had my blood pressure checked twice in the last 3 months and it's very good.

At 13st 2 I'm maybe a stone over where I was in my 20's. So I'm a bit overweight but strong and in very good shape from a cardio perspective.

I do need to be very careful with my achilles/tendons/stretching in general - I think that's the most likely problem aread TBH.
 
I've had physios and sports injury training folks crawling all over me for most or 2017. When I was off the running I was cycling and swimming and had a personal trainer making me sweat. Once back on it I managed a 10k in 60 minutes which I thought was a bit rubbish but seems OK for my age. I've spent 7 years regularly cycling to work and my resting heart rate averages 52 over the last 12 months and 51 over the last 3. I've had my blood pressure checked twice in the last 3 months and it's very good.

At 13st 2 I'm maybe a stone over where I was in my 20's. So I'm a bit overweight but strong and in very good shape from a cardio perspective.

I do need to be very careful with my achilles/tendons/stretching in general - I think that's the most likely problem aread TBH.

Yes to being v careful with Achilles. I’ve torn both of mine playing squash and the noise when they broke was horrendous. And now both calves look like chicken drumsticks according to @Happytalk73 :confused::D
 
Yes to being v careful with Achilles. I’ve torn both of mine playing squash and the noise when they broke was horrendous. And now both calves look like chicken drumsticks according to @Happytalk73 :confused::D

Ow!!! Oddly enough the surgeon who looked at him had done the exact same thing to his playing badminton with one of his kids.

Mine didn't snap but got damaged where it attaches to the bone - instertional achilles tendonitus.

Ironically the injury occurred when a personal trainer was trying to stretch out my calves and hamstrings after a 90 minute training session.....
 
I would suggest that such an intense exercise regime at your age may not be wise particularly if you are slightly overweight. Training against targets number of stairs, Duncan Bannatyne etc etc suggests "competitive training" which always has the danger of you pushing beyond sensible limits. High impact exercise places undue strain on joints and ligaments which may accelerate wear and injury as you have already found .
How to Avoid Exercises That Age You Faster
With intense exercise the key is to limit your maximum heart rate- this drops as you age and I would suggest that monitoring your maximum heart rate is a more useful tool than counting the flights of stairs you have climbed.:dk:
Know Your Target Heart Rates for Exercise, Losing Weight and Health

Thanks - useful links. On the first one I do the yoga, stretching and sleeping - I could do with some more weights to build a little upper body muscle.

On the second one I'm 50 bpm at rest today. Medium pace running takes me to 110-ish. Sprinting/hills to 140-ish. Sprinting up a hill with wrist weights 160-ish for short periods.

Interestingly my heart rate that was creeping up in the US where I was mainly doing medium-rate running on a machine. It was 50/51 when I left was rising to 53/4 at the end but this week where I've been doing tons of stairs (164 flights or appoximately 3.5 Nat West Towers) it's been falling back down on a daily basis.

I'll do a bit of hill running tomorrow. Then quieten down a bit before the tower climb itself.
 
I was running in my forties, 42:35 was my best time for a 10K, but these days my knees aren't up to it, too many years hanging of the sides of racing dinghies I think. Can still walk quite briskly though which I' OK with for someone who's well past his sell by date!
 
Don't break wind on the way up. That would be wrong on so many levels.

Good luck with your efforts.

Chris
 

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