Let's just be clear. There's something wrong with me that makes me do things to prove to myself I can do them. To that end it was time to climb the tallest building in Seattle. Yeah, yeah. It was for some charity, but to be honest it was very little about that. Remember, our family cause is breast cancer, so this was just to see if I could actually climb 69 flights of stairs.
It seemed plausible. I mean, it was only about 800 feet of gain. (788 to be exact.) That's about what it is to run to the Iron Horse and back. But this was in a stairwell so at about a 45 degree angle. Worse, there were kids around.
You know, them. The in-shape kids. The ones from Federal Way High School that made up about 80% of the group scheduled to start at 12:15. My group. <sigh>
The kid in front of me, all of about 17 and in the prime of life, was wearing boxing gloves and a hoody pulled tight around his face. He danced at the starting line and sprinted into the stairwell. Me? I stood nervously, concerned mostly about how many of the kids behind me would pass me.
On the upside, the stairs were pretty narrow and that meant I could use the rails like they were trekking poles. I know how to do that.
And nobody was breathing down my neck right away.
And the kid with the boxing gloves was hunched over in a corner on about the 30th floor. (Not that I was happy, but, well, yeah. Kind of.)
I did get passed by a few, but I passed more than passed me. And I beat the average time of 15 minutes with a time of 13:08. Of course, that was still six minutes off the winner, but that's not my concern because now I can put a mark on the map in downtown Seattle and move on to bigger things. Or at least natural ones.
Total distance was about a quarter mile with 788 feet of gain.
Bonus stats:
13:08 total time
129/308 for age
597/2494 overall
498/1327 for all males
