“Hey, you want to take the stairs? It won’t take long and we will beat all of these people trying to take the elevator”, a short guy with glasses said.

I looked at him and he was dead serious in a joking way. I looked around and thought it couldn’t hurt. I told him, “sure, why not”.

I ran up 5 flights of stairs and was out of energy, I was already sweating and walked the rest of the remaining 4 flights of stairs. The older gentleman was still running up the flight of stairs, he got off 2 floors up and at a quicker time. I was like, wtf, how did he do that?

I sat down in my chair and took a couple of puffs of doctor-approve air and drank tons of water. I didn’t think much of it until I arrived to work this past monday. I have already been doing some cardio for a week and a half already, but it seemed like nothing compared to the brief time struggling up the 9 flights of stairs. So yesterday I decided I would put in some extra cardio and walk up the stairs. I was going to just stop at the 15th floor, which is the same one I work on. But I kept going and going and going and going all the way to the 25th floor of the building. I felt I accomplished so much in that short, but felt long time, and wanted to do more exercises. I continued to walk done the stairs back to my cubicle on the 15th floor.

I told a couple of people what I done and they were shocked. Everyone was saying why did I do that, you are is such good shape already? I had no answer, I had no real reason why I traveled up to the top of the building via the stairs, it was something I just wanted to do. There are so many scenarios where I do things just for the hell of it and can’t put a finger on the why (taking the Nike saying literally, every time). So today I walked up the 25 floors of stairs (actually more, started in the basement) again and I timed myself. Less than 8 minutes up and a total of 10 minutes to get back down to my floor. I thought it would take longer, I thought the task would be a little harder with me being all sore and not stretching from the day before. Nope, it wasn’t, I didn’t use my puffer this time. I wanted to do it again, but my work clothes were getting wet because of the sweating and went ahead and ate my lunch (a hand full and a half of almonds and raisins and a cup of water). I think I am going to try to do this 2-3 times per week, just for the hell of it, and see what else I learn about myself.

Why did I do this, why do I do things like this? I don’t know, I can’t really put a finger on it. It could be because I am a very very curious kid (from the 2nd floor jumping down to my parents living room, to cutting the skin off a frog, to jumping head first in a 4 ft deep pool (this one was really stupid)), who wants to try things out for himself and see if it is true of the experience one feels by doing things. We can’t always take what other people say to heart, we have to try them for ourselves and to see what we learn in the process. We might not learn much of anything, but we might start changing our habits, we might appreciate someone else’s opinion. I don’t really know. But I am going to continue to walk the stairs until I find something else that interest me…