blsmith’s BodyBlog

Thank you everyone. Now in more detail. Arrived at the Metro Toronto Convention Centre at 5:45, got registered and stood in line to get going. They weren’t letting anyone start until 6:30 in groups of 100. I was in the 7th group to go. When I finally was let go you have to go up a set of escalators and then a fairly long walk to get to the CN Tower, partly outside in the cold, and I am in t-shirt and shorts. When I got to the tower, security wouldn’t let you in without a baton sweep. You weren’t allowed to bring ANYTHING into the tower, no water, no ipods… nothing. Finally I get inside and go through a long corridor until we get to another security check point (another line, sighs) I just want to start this!!!! Finally at 7:04 I get clocked in and I begin. They have EMTs every 20 floors or so on the landings just in case. I would go up every 8 flights and then take a short 20 second rest. When I hit the 88th flight my knee started to hurt. By the 100th flight the stairs and handrails were getting slippery from everyones sweat EWWWWWWWW! Finally I am at the 144th flight and I am at the finish line clocking in at 7:46, a total of 42 minutes and 24 seconds. I have this huge grin until… we have to go up ANOTHER 10 flights to get to the observation deck!!! I finally get up there and it is so crowded up there, takes me 15 minutes to get to the water they provided, and then at least another half hour in line to get the elevator down!!! By the time I get downstairs to my waiting wife (no one other than climbers were allowed to the top and after seeing the crowd there I could see why) it was 8:40pm. I just picked up my t-shirt got some powerade zero they had back in the convention centre and went home for some much needed food! It was a great experience and an even better feeling of accomplishment. But I think I will wait a couple of years to try it again. I want to thank everyone again for their support. To borrow the line from the United Way campaign… WITHOUT YOU THERE WOULD BE NO WAY!

This entry was posted on Friday, October 23rd, 2009 at 5:04 am and is filed under Training. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.