13:40!!!

Cute Poster at the top

I started the day under-slept and insufficiently hydrated, but I placed 780 out of 1793 climbers. Really? I was faster than more than half of the super fit looking people there?!?! Wahoo! I'm above average! My goal was to finish in less than 15 minutes so I couldn't be more pleased with my finishing time of 13:40. (Official Results)

When my team first arrived to the start line it was out the door and around the corner, but by the time actually jumped in line, it had disappeared. I was expecting to get a few moments to center myself while in line, but before I knew it a man's hand was on my shoulder to get my attention to tell me to "GO!"

The first 20ish floors were the hardest because I had a sharp pain in my right knee every time I took a step. I never had this while practicing and it was so bad that I strongly considered quitting several times. I finally stopped long enough to kick out my leg hard on one of the landings and it magically fixed itself and was quickly forgotten.

I wish they had some sort of  "slow people on the outside" convention because passing the slower folks took a lot of energy. And I had to do it a lot. They had heats scheduled every five minutes but that really just gave a guideline for when to jump in line. They ended up releasing the climbers every 5-10 seconds continuously.

They had cheerleaders along the route but somehow didn't get them spread out very well and they were only on the lower half of the building. Loud blowers pushed refreshing cold air into the shaft but that only happened twice and once you were just a couple floors from the blowers it was obnoxiously hot again.

I was glad I wore a stop watch. I could watch my splits knowing that I needed to hit every 10 floors in less than 3 minutes to meet my goal. And it was helpful mentally to be able to look at my time and tell myself, "Only 7 more minutes of hell and then I can rest... Only 3 more minutes of hell and then I can rest." It worked because I didn't take any breaks.

I was expecting to end outside and was disappointed when it ended in a conference room rather than bursting into the sunshine with a 360 degree view of the city. Still a gorgeous view from the top though.

A couple nights ago I was telling a guy about my weekend plans and mentioned that the Republic Plaza is the tallest building in Denver. We got in an argument because he said "No, the Century Link building is taller!" Well, I now have evidence that I'm right ;) We were obviously higher than the nearby Century Link building. (And wiki agrees so it must be true)

The shorter Century Link building 

OK, maybe not so "obviously". It's only 5 feet shorter than the Republic Plaza.

The usual crummy free event t-shirt turned out to be a super shnazzy running jersey. And a fancy "participant" medal too!

Thank you so much to those of you who made my fundraising super dooper easy: Mom and Dad, Renee, My Biggest Cheerleader, Pluto, and Matt.

Still to come: picture of my new and improved calf muscles. :) And my next fitness goal to tackle for the year? Half-marathon! And I might be doing one of those insane-looking, dirty competitions. Tough Mudder or Rugged Maniac. Time will tell...

Can't wait for next year!