Tower climbing update

The hardest part about being a racing urban joggler is the early Sunday morning start times after a night of hanging out with the Urban Tribe. Last night was the Cowboy Mouth concert at the Chicago House of Blues. A great concert but we didn’t get home until after 2:00 am. The stair climb event started at 7:00 am so I didn’t get a lot of sleep.

Climbing the Stairs
I decided to do the stair climb joggling because I already knew I could do it (I’d finished the John Hancock at 96 floors) and I knew I wouldn’t be in contention for the fastest times. Additionally, I’ve embraced the reality of my joggling. I am a joggler. I joggle.

I started off at 7:24:51 am with my slick, new Gballz joggling bags. I had never actually tried juggling as I went up stairs so I felt a bit uneasy about doing it. But I figured it shouldn’t be too hard as juggling is what I do. For the most part, the juggling went well. I only had 3 drops the entire time.

The first came as I approached the 48 floor. One bag collided with another and went tumbling back down the stairs (1 and a half flights). Since there are no official rules for joggling a stair climb, I figured it would be fair to say that you have to go down to where the ball dropped, resume juggling there before you could go up any stairs. This means you juggle the same set of stairs twice but it’s better than having to go all the way back down to the beginning. The other drops came closer to the top, floors 78 and 84. Thankfully, they didn’t fall more than one or two steps.

I started the climb by doing 2 stairs at a time. This lasted about 20 floors. When you do stair climb races, the key for speed is doing 2 stairs at a time. Another key is to use the rail to pull yourself up so your legs don’t get too tired. However, I was juggling so getting assistance from the rail wasn’t possible.

The burn in my legs started about floor 35 and continued the rest of the way. I did get a little relief when I stopped to get water at a few of the floors but mostly, these stair climbs hurt! And my lungs hurt too. It’s a whole different kind of pain than marathon running.

I finished somewhere around 23 minutes. Unfortunately, I don’t know my exact time because I didn’t start my watch. I’ll have to look on the web for the official race times later. I was only passed by one other stair climber and I passed a whole bunch of people.

I don’t know what the world record for climbing stairs while juggling would be, but right now I’ve never heard of anyone doing it so I just might have the fastest time. 23 minutes for 2109 steps is the mark. Has anyone heard of a faster time?

Update 11/14/06: My official time was 23:53 and I came in 293rd place. The winner did it in a blistering 13:29. For all the official times check out this page .