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Showing posts from November, 2013

Upstairs and Downstairs and in my Lady's chamber

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Strange Angles in the Peterson Bldg. Not quite the Mendel Okay, the bit about the "lady's chamber" was an outright fabrication, but you're here... so that's good. Before I get into the pictures, a quick update on my stair running. This week I've bested my records at both the 5T and 10T times (where T=11 floors up and down). 5T stands at 15m08s and 10T is 32m30s. 10T took me about 55 minutes the first time. On with the photos... Picked a freakishly cold day to do some more stair explorations. Neither my trusty, if aging, Pentax K-x, nor my trusty, if aging, body had an easy time with the -30C wind chill. After getting politely kicked out of the Agri-Food Canada Research building (I had been inside looking at maps for several minutes without "checking in" at the security desk),  Found +Kent Pollard ,s  Peterson Bldg . I must say, the staff was a whole lot nicer there. A bit off the beaten path but, the stairs were unusual as prom

Going Staircrazy

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Health Sciences Entrance. With all the reflections and directionality, it feels Escher-esque to me. Winter is settling in slowly this year. No rush. As one of the millions on the Canadian prairie who wondered last year where all the sun was, it was quite a thrill to be walking around mid November with just a t-shirt, a tripod and my camera. New Wing of Dentistry Old Dentistry/ Health Sciences You would think that I would be sick to death of stairs right now, but the truth is that my fascination is growing ever deeper. When I did up my last post I spent some time looking through old photos that I had of campus stairs to include. It reminded me two things: firstly, despite the simple going up and down thing they have going, there is great variety in stair design and secondly, my photographic eye has come a long way in a few years. So, I decided to revisit some of my favourites and see how many ways I could skin the same cat, so to speak. Stairs are stairs after all, but w

Climbing a Stairway to...

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Arts Tower from basement level I had some great reaction to my last post about stairs. Alas, I don't have any mysterious wilds into which I can trek nor vast unexplored ranges of mountains. However, obsessively climbing stairs seem to be sufficiently strange for people to engage me with questions (and concerns) on the topic. This is not going to be an FAQ, but I am going to share a bit of my process with you in hopes that it will answer some common queries. Most of this post was inspired by my friend, Dave. He wasn't the first one to ask me what I thought about when I spend an hour and a half climbing the same set of stairs, but he did cause me to think most deeply about it. He is no stranger to feats of endurance. I was in the process of formulating a short one paragraph answer, when I realized that I couldn't honestly do that. Answering in one paragraph I could've come up with some inspiring snippet of honesty about why I do it and the effect it has on my life.

Stairs of the World II -- The Revenge

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This post is mostly for me. As, I suppose, all of them are. I like to have a specific record of my exercise when I am trying improve on something difficult. I find that it really helps me to focus on the little things necessary to improve. When I share that with you, it gives makes the goal seem more real and somehow more important to achieve. Anyway, yes, I took a break from stair climbing during my healing process. But, I've been back at it pretty hard in the last little while. I thought an update was in order. In case you missed the first post on stairs. What's new? Below is my tower activity since injuring my ribs. I fill in a web form each time I run the tower and it updates a spreadsheet for me. As you may care to notice, I took some heart rate measurements at several points today (last row, right hand column). Times (usually) follow the format of hh:mm:ss.tenthsec 15/09/2013 10:04:30 Arts Tower run 17:31.5 5x u/d. 1st time on the stairs since my rib injury. S