Skyrise Chicago Sears or Willis or Something Tower Climb

On Sunday of this past weekend, I climbed the Sears Willis Tower.  I have trouble calling it by its new name.  

Let's pretend it says "Sears Tower," okay?

As you remember... because I keep repeating myself over and over again... because I'm proud of my little brother, I was doing this stair climb to accompany my brother.  He's recently lost 80lbs (HOLLA!) in large part due to some serious hours spent on the stairmill.  He flew to New York to stand in Brooklyn and hold a sign while I ran the marathon and we didn't even make it to Shake Shack after; I can climb the Sears Tower with him.

Who's Doug?

Somehow he conned me and two of his closest friends into doing it with him.

We bought a copy of this picture.
It's so delightfully fake.

I didn't train, at all.  My office is on the 4th floor at work, and I haven't taken the stairs in months.  I haven't been to the gym since the summer, and I don't even do any non-running cross-training.  Heck, I haven't even run up a hill since Mt. Washington.  I wasn't prepared.  Oh, sure, I told myself.  Your marathon glory will carry you up 103 flights of stairs.  Because that's how these things work, obviously.

Where is that glory? This is how I looked
from flights 2-103.

It was hard.  Like, really hard. I don't know how else to describe it.  A hot stairwell, full of sweaty people, and it just goes up and up and up.  I was dizzy and tired and I held my brother back.  He had trained to rock this race, and instead he had to give me 2100 stairs' worth of pep talks to coax me up another flight.

Of course, the reason to make it up to the top is for The Ledge.  The Ledge: a terrifying glass box that juts out from the side of the building and purports to be structurally sound and weight bearing, against all visual odds.  It's just freaky.  Seriously freaky.

First, I tried to scoot out on my butt.  That was scary.  Okay, what about on my back?

Still kind of scary.  I don't like to fly, though, either.  

I never got comfortable with it, but I did get to the point where I could stand out there, for team photos at least:

This is a real photo.  Not edited.

I wish I had more adjectives to use to describe this one, but (like Sarah pointed out), I'm over-raced right now and it's all a blur.  This race was disturbing.  But worth it.  That said, this is a race that will not make it onto my calendar again next year.  Let the more intrepid have it.