Ok, I complained enough about the stair climb last time, I should update you on how it went.
When people who haven't done stair climbs ask me about them, I describe them as "about fifteen minutes of hell". And that's about what it was this morning in the stairwell of the John Hancock building.
After about ten floors I was breathing hard, wondering when it was going to be over. At about thirty floors I looked at my watch, wondering whether I would make it. It read about five minutes. I wanted to quit. At about 65 floors I looked again and realized I was on pace to finish in around 15 minutes, and gave up any idea of a big push to the finish. I was hurting.
I'm sure the 20 miler I did yesterday slowed things down. I was very stiff going up. Normally I don't really take stair climbs too competitively. I don't really have a frame of reference to compare them to. But today I was taking part in a (all in fun) media challenge, as well as running with my friends at Fleet Feet Sports. They won the overall team competition, and I didn't want to embarrass myself. And my media my teammates were other ABC-7 employees. I promised them I would run a fast time so we could try to win.
As it turned out we did win, but I was not the fastest media entrant. Mike Adamle from NBC-5 was seven seconds faster. Darn! I think he was sandbagging last month when I beat him in the AON climb! But Dan Ponce, Karen Jordan, and Ben Bradley (in that order of finish) did their part and we pulled it out. By the way, the other woman in the picture is Sarah Doidge, a producer, who raised the most money for the American Lung Association in the group. Go Sarah!
Because of the climb, and the awful weather today, I'm giving myself the rest of the day off from running. I figure a stair climb counts more as cross-training than anything else, but I'm not gonna worry about it at this point.
I am going to enjoy a cutback week of marathon training though! I assume the conditions are going to have to improve as the week goes on. As I've said before, the treadmill, for me, is not an option. So I'll see you on the roads....
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