Stairs. Oh How I Hate Stairs.

I work in an office building, on the 7th floor. Good view, but that's a lot of stairs to climb. In fact, I rarely ever take the stairs. In the past 5 years, I may have climbed them 10 times. Each story is 22 steps, and they're tall steps.

This January, it seems that everyone in my office is on some sort of diet or exercise plan, and a couple of them were doing the stairs twice a day. I thought it was a good idea, but I didn't want to share my wheezing discomfort with my office mates. Besides, I said I was taking things slowly.

But I'd been re-reading the Primal Blueprint and thought I was done with excuses. So I started climbing the stairs. Just once a day, and just by myself. No one else to see how red faced I was getting.

You know what I discovered? It's not that bad. Yeah, I'm out of breath. But I just go slowly. I figure I'm still burning calories, whether I sprint or plod. So for the past week, I've plodded up the stairs at least once a day.

The last couple of days, I've been thinking about sprint workouts. Seems good in my head, but I've never been able to get up the gumption after 22-month old Groksy goes to bed to do anything strenuous. Today, I decided to change that.

I sprinted up the stairs.

Okay, maybe I only made it up three flights before my legs got too rubbery to go on. But I plodded my way up another four flights, then forced myself to sprint two more flights. By this point, I had to actually stop and catch my breath before I plodded the remainder of the way to the top.

You know what I learned?

The trip goes a lot faster when you sprint, even if you take time out to rest. You're not thinking about each individual stair, but whether or not your rubbery legs will make the rise or if you'll fall flat on your face.

And two, I actually felt kind of exhilarated. Yeah, I was sucking wind and my legs were rubbery, but my mind was happy. I'll have to try it again tomorrow. Small steps, but it's a start.

The Take Away: Don't just walk up the stairs. Sprint up a couple of those flights.