It was a fundraiser for WWF, required a bit of donation money and my family and friends certainly stepped up to the plate on that one. I needed $75 raised to participate but got to $100 almost instantly. Thanks everyone!
So the race was vintage chip-timed, as in, you were given a card which was time-stamped at the bottom, then time stamped at the top.
But wait, let me rewind. This was obviously in Toronto, and it was April 27th. The rules required you to arrive to receive your race kit between 6 am and 10 am. I decided I didn't want to go the day before, so I resolved to just wake up super early and suck it up. That meant waking up at 3:00 am to be on the bus at 3:30 am. Whatever, I survived. I rolled into Toronto at approximately 5:30 am, laced up my shoes and strapped my backpack on nice and good and warm-up jogged to the tower (3 km or so). What I encountered upon approaching the tower was quite surprising.
The line of people leading up to registration was literally* as long as the tower was high! This isn't actually a very interesting story. I'll skip to actually running it.
I have never done this before, so I had no idea what to expect for time. A friend of mine had done 15 minutes, and I saw the World record was just shy of 8 minutes... So I figured I would be somewhere in there. I decided I wanted to shoot for single digits. Under 10 min... I calculated how long it should take to run each floor... but that number was too small to keep myself on pace. I resolved to break it into quarters - 36 flights - 2:30 each. After surfing lines and trying to get ahead of the giant girl guides group or whatever (so they wouldn't hold me up in the tube), I got my card punched and was off!
Pow! Reminiscent of high school track season (we did a lot of early season stair running because many people didn't have snow running gear), I began sprinting up 'dem stairs! ...and I mean sprinting. I got very excited, and was going all out man. I got to flight 30 and realized I was in the red-zone and right on the verge of being toasted. Crap. 114 flights to go. I didn't even check my watch since I knew I blew the race already. There were also a heck of a lot of people in the way. From here on in, I would "jog" up the stairs the best I could, then be forced to walk a flight whilst being stuck behind groups of people walking two-abreast (despite the rules oh so clearly asking you to stay to the right if you will be walking). Regardless, I felt like I had ample ability to go fast. I may have been able to reduce 20 seconds at best if it were an empty tower.
Half way up the tower I was nearly weezing. I don't normally get sore, hurting lungs when I run, but this was certainly the feeling I had. By about 70 flights my ears popped from elevation. I was really suffering. I really underestimated this challenge... However, I kept the countdown going as fast as I could.
With about 10 flights left, it was imminent I would be passing a very tall, strong looking man amidst a horde of specimens of a physically lesser quality. He who would refer to himself as "Coach J" started hollering and clapping. Coach J wanted everyone to know that "this ain't hard!" and that "no matter what your fitness level is, this IS NOT HARD WOOT!" He did this by yelling it non-stop until we reached the top of the tower. He also took the time to make the comment "Toronto's finest! Emergency response. Give it up!" very loud, into the face of one of the volunteer emergency responders. Coach J, I love the enthusiasm. Really, I do. But please please please, some people don't find that kind of reinforcement helpful. In fact, I can imagine someone who could find it derogatory and offensive. I personally don't care, I've got enough self-motivation for everyone. What I really care about is how obnoxious this guy was!
Ways for Coach J to improve:
1) If it's not hard, keep up with me.
2) Keep your clapping arm in your own lane so I don't have to dodge it and get slapped
3) Say thank you to people you would like to thank. Don't shout impersonally compliments into their face.
I'm not mad at Coach J, I liked that he was there because it gave me something to be exasperated about. It's like being held up by the driver so hopelessly trying to back into their space that it becomes funny. Hold on, I'm bad at describing this. Here, this is Coach J:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tf4TIWECZ30
So how did I do? Just a hair under 12 minutes. That was good enough for 6th out of about 4000 on the individual climb day, 3rd for the team climb. 8th out of everyone. That's kind of cool! But pretty far from randomly-assigned-goal-pace. Whatever, it was fun!
So uhm... when I got to the top, my lungs had collapsed, felt like they had been clawed by every animal that WWF has ever tried to save, and I tasted blood. Daaaamn. And this lung pain lasted for about a day and a half. I could barely take a full breath and I had wet coughing for about the same amount of time. If anyone knows why I would get this kind of reaction, I would be interested in knowing. I hypothesize that on top of going very anaerobic, maybe the number of people in that tube and elevation change caused me to have a simulated asthma response? Anyone? Bueller?
Adam "The Elevator" Fortais
*Using literally figuratively
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