My goal time going into this race was under 7 minutes. I had never been past 30 stories without a break so I was still pretty nervous for this but I did a lot of race pace training for this and felt 6.42 to 6.52 was where I would be at. I talked 13 of my coworkers into doing this race and all were glad they did it. I figured at least one would yell at me lol.
I was super intimidated when I first walked in. I looked around and so many people looked really fit and athletic and most younger than I. I am not sure if I started really fast or the first few floor were short floors as I hit floor 15 in 2 minutes flat which was 25 seconds ahead of my pace time. I felt great and was thinking I will be able to do this in under 6 minutes. Then at about floor 25 I hit the pain cave. Started to feel sick to my stomach and two floors later my head started to pound. My original plan was to really pick it up at floor 25 but I knew that was not going to happen. I started running into traffic about floor 28 and had the thought of just staying behind the people and then said to myself push through and pass them so I did.
I always said I could sprint 5 floor on empty but at this point in the race I didn't want to puke and knew sprinting or not my time would not be near the top in my age group. I made it to the top in 6.52. Yes!!! I got under 7. I could barely walk but there was not much room to lay down anyway so I just walked it off for about 3 or 4 minutes. It took awhile but I felt some throat burn and some slight coughing once I got down stairs but not too bad. I think the one mistake I made in training was to stay at race pace for most of my workouts. Looking back I should have pushed harder in my 15 story training building. I focused too much on pace. But looking at the bright side of things is I was 84th out of 1454 climbers. I have only been training a year and had no cardio base to start so that's pretty good.
I'm still fine tuning my training and learning what it takes to really compete at a high level. I have to remind myself that cardio is like weight training in that it takes awhile to build up strength and endurance. Next year at the trek I think I will improve greatly. Goal is under 6 but in reality I want low 5 minute range. It will be two full years of training by then so no excuses or cardio being new to me :)
