– On January 6th I decided to sign up for my
first tower run. I didn’t even know
these existed until I saw the email from my job. After lots of research I found out this is a
huge sport and a lot of the top climbers in the world are mid 30’s to even
their 50’s. My first goal was just to
complete the 40 stories in under ten minutes.
The first time I tried the steps I did twice up and twice down so about
20 stories. I did that same routine for
a second run and ended up crawling up the last few flights, I was so tired. Sometime in that first week of training I
decided I didn’t just want to finish in under ten minutes. I wanted to win my age group but knew the
short time I had to train that may not happen.
I trained really hard nearly every day and then on Feb 2, 2016 when I
was just doing the insanity fit test I strained my groin. I made the mistake of working out the next
day anyway and it hurt way worse the day after.
I was so bummed and still bummed as I’m typing this. I don’t know how long it will take to heal
but my goal of placing is probably gone but it’s not worth pushing through the
pain and risking damaging it more. I
should be good to go come 2-20-2016 but my time will not be near what I want.
Funny enough this is when I realized it does not really
matter what I get time wise in my first run.
I want to be one of the best not only in my age group but overall. I figure I don’t have a big window to be one
of the best overall but 4 or 5 years might be a reality. The real question is why in the world do I want
to do this? Most of these races are fairly short but even my training in a 15
story building is brutal. Your legs burn
like crazy early on and eventually turn to jello but you can’t stop, you just
have to pull on the rail harder with your arms and then they start to turn to
jello. Meanwhile you are breathing so
hard that you really can’t catch your breath but you can’t stop. Once you make it to the top you just collapse
and think why am I doing this lol. Then
I pull myself up off the ground and do it again. I should mention that I don’t even like
cardio or stairs lol. But there is
something about the challenge of doing it that intrigues me. It has really brought out my competitive
spirit. I have never considered myself
an athlete but I am quick, have strong arms and I believe mentally strong which
is very important if you want to do really good. I for sure have to get my quads stronger and
my cardio overall needs a huge improvement but I’ve already made strides in
that area in a short time.
At first the thought of the longer climbs 80 to 103 stories
was out of the picture but if I want to be one of the best nationwide and even
worldwide you have to do those climbs.
And what is super cool is if you place high enough in certain climbs
then you get invited to the empire state building climb which is pretty
exclusive. I think once I get in good
shape that my workouts will not be as painful so much of the time. I will always push hard in a workout but not
as often to exhaustion. I just think it
is important to mentally prepare yourself to be able to push through when the
going gets really tough. Assuming this
groin heals as expected and I can start training again I plan to do the Des
Moines, IA Climb. It is kind of cool
because it is 4 buildings. 15,16,22, and
32 stories. Not like doing 80 at once of course but will give me a good idea of
where I’m at conditioning wise as there will be some really good climbers
there.
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