You take the elevator... I'll take the stairs! This was the week to climb. As in, The tallest building in North America , The Willis (formerly Sears) Tower.
The Rehabilitation Institute of Chicago has started their first annual Tower Up! for charity event. A climb up the stairways of the tallest building in America: 103 floors , 2,109 stairs, and lots of heavy breathing. Game on! I ended up raising a good amount of money for the RIC. It is truly a great cause.
I definitely trained less for the climb than I did for my first marathon a few weeks back. As in, I took the 4 flights up to my office once this last week (and got slightly winded at that).
When I picked up my packet on Saturday, someone mentioned that I was going to have a hard time. What was I going to do, I had already raised my funds and I was going to finish this climb no matter what.
It is 8:30 on Sunday, I am by myself with a 1000 other climbers and some dude says you have 10 seconds left ... Go! I know you can do this! (I didn't, though). I took the Tortoise vs. the Stair philosophy. Do not burn myself out. They let you out in 10 second increments. Even though, I was climbing slowly, I passed my first person at stair 10. I kept climbing and climbing those narrow stairways. It was exhausting work. By the 40th floor, I had worked up a lather worthy of Secretariat. By the 80th floor, I was feeling slightly dizzy. By the 90th floor, I actually was feeling better, yet noticed that something frightening must have happened in this rarefied atmosphere. Everyone started breathing really funny, I hear deep wheezy, loud noises. Everyone started walking slower, lots of grunting (one guy behind me was lunging ahead while grabbing the railing with both arms on each step) as I picked up the pace. It felt like people were turning into zombies. I regrouped and carried on. It was a nice touch at floor 92 when the volunteers said "You just passed the Empire State Building". Then on floor 94, one guy had has i-dock on "Stairway to Heaven" by Led Zeppelin. He yelled out you are almost in Heaven - 9 floors left. Finishing was a great accomplishment. I beat both my goals of 1) finishing and 2) under 30 minutes by completing the climb in 27 minutes.
Actually the best part of this week was our family day and night in Chicago (which preceded my climb). We went to the Museum of Science and Industry, went swimming in the hotel pool, had a pasta dinner and got to see the holiday scene in Chicago. A new family tradition has started! We will try to visit Chicago at this time every year.
Pictures above: Climbing Willis (Sears) Tower, before/after climbing pics, standing on the new "ledge" hanging outside the sky deck. Videos: climbing the stairs and post race scene at the observation deck.
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