Willis Tower 2013

Each year we race up the Willis Tower, there are new things to learn. This is a prolonged process of experimentation. We can prepare in a different way each year. But then, we must wait another 365 days before comparing different outcomes that come with different techniques.

This year, Jason and I used different approaches in our training. Basically, his system is simple. He builds his strength and endurance through various forms of play. This can be anything from playing soccer to jumping on our trampoline. I like to take things very systematically. I experiment with a variety of elements and then try to determine which aspects had what effect on the outcome. This is not purely scientific. To be purely scientific, I would do everything the same each year except for changing one thing. But I can only do that in training. Changes for the actual race get clustered together, so it is not possible to note what change had the most impact. There is some guesswork combined with some science.

This year, I did a lot of training in taller buildings. As a result, I stopped using the metronome clicks. I do not want to draw unwanted attention to myself when training in public places. I like to fade into the background and be unobtrusive. Since I had not used the metronome for many months, I was suddenly faced with a question. Should I use it to help with pacing in the race up the Willis Tower? Or should I race without it since I was no longer accustomed to using it. I was afraid to let go of this special crutch. It was almost like my secret weapon in the conquest of the building. I want the race time each year to be faster than the year before. It seemed like too much of a risk to discontinue using the tried and true method. But, I realized that it was no longer my regular practice. It had become unfamiliar. In the past, it really helped me to hold back at the beginning of the race. It helped to push me in the middle and last part of the race. But there were sections of longer races where I fell behind the metronome clicks. At that point, the clicks were interfering rather than helping me. I finally decided to ditch the metronome and go natural. This was a very freeing decision. It meant one less thing to fuss with at the race. In past races, the MP3 player (with the metronome clicks) had malfunctioned and had caused problems. Now, that would not be an issue.

I made one significant mistake in the week before the race. I tried an experiment. It was a great idea, if only it had been done a month before the race. I wore heavy street shoes in my training in a tall building on the Thursday before the race (which was on Sunday). Wearing something heavy while training would leave me feeling light in my Vibrum Five Fingers "shoes" (more like gloves for the feet). The theory was great. But I tried to apply it at the wrong time.

Except for this mistake, I had tapered during the last week. Each training involved fewer steps than normal (but still at a high intensity). This had worked very well in 2012. But the business of using heavy shoes so close to a race was ill conceived.

The morning started in a strange way for me. Before each race, I set two alarms. One is my regular alarm (on the cell phone). The next one is an alarm on a digital watch. The cell phone alarm is quieter, so it is set five minutes before the watch alarm. But this time, I never heard the cell phone alarm. I discovered that AT&T had a surprise for me. For the past few years, phones on the AT&T system went through the time change (away from daylight saving time) at 10:00 AM on Sunday. I had to set the cell phone alarm according to daylight saving time even though we would be using standard time that day. But, surprise, surprise. AT&T tried something new this time around. They made the time change during the night (probably at 2:00 AM when it is supposed to happen). As a result, that alarm rang one hour late. But it was not a problem since there was a backup alarm.

I came downstairs and tanked up on water. Then I heard an interesting sound. It seemed like owls were calling out to each other. I opened the door at 3:40 AM to hear them better. Sure enough. There were owls calling back and forth to each other. Normally, I am not superstitious. But this sound took me back to a film we had watched for mission training in 1977. In the film, a Catholic priest was working with native people in the far north. He tried to learn and understand their culture. When someone in that culture said, "I heard the owl call my name" it meant that person was going to die.

I train hard and race hard. With heart rates exceeding normally accepted beats per minute, my wife (and my doctor) fuss at me about training so hard. They talk about possible risks. Now, on the day of a race, I wondered if the owl was calling my name. It gave me a strange feeling, but I pushed the thought aside and prepared breakfast (tofu, oatmeal, a banana, and some kale). I added one item to the menu. I took a vitamin B-12 supplement since I do not use dairy products. Perhaps this would help in blood cell production (or perhaps it was too late for the race, but would aid in replacing blood cells damaged by the heavy workout.

Jason and I got on the highway at a much better time. This year, there was no traffic jam. But I had to hit the brakes hard for another reason. A deer was walking toward me in the right lane of I-55 (I was in the center lane). I was afraid it would step out in front of me. I put on the hazard lights and the people behind me also slowed down and nearly stopped. The deer wandered off the highway and back into the trees. Now I was more anxious than before. My heart was beating faster and I was distracted. I managed to miss the turn for I-290 and went too far north. I had left the map book in the trunk, so we had to sniff our way back down to the Willis (Sears) Tower. Thankfully, we got there at a much better time than the previous year (about 6:30 AM this time). The check-in was in a new location (in the upper lobby). We prepared ourselves mentally for the wait in order to leave our things in the baggage check-in area. But the wait was less than 60 seconds. What a wonderful surprise.

This time was different than before. We were climbing as part of the "Something Special" team led by Eldridge Bolin. It was fun to join the group (though we climbed separately based on ability levels).

As we came to one part of the building, I heard a familiar voice shouting, "Glenn." I turned and saw Mark Trahanovsky (from West Coast Labels). We wear the West Coast Labels shirt when we race up buildings. Yes, we wore the shirt from one (ad hoc) team while climbing for another team (which used our scores for winning the team category).

We waited at the beginning of the group that should go up immediately behind the elite climbers. Somehow, some regular people got in with the elite group. But it was not as bad as last time. I only had to pass around 12 people on the way up this time. One of them gave me a big surprise. There was one of the rehab patients with a walker, going up right behind the elite climbers. After chugging around him near the second floor, the rest of the trip up was less congested than we had experienced in 2012.

In the stairs, I noticed several things. It is always very uncomfortable to climb this fast. That is to be expected. But my legs felt heavier than I expected. I realized that I should not have worn the heavy shoes while training the Thursday before the race. The timing of breakfast was pretty much perfect (roughly three hours between eating and racing). The energy level was pretty good. But it could have been better. I realized that I had messed up during two of the nights in the five days before the race. I had stayed up late doing things. My body would have performed better if all of the preceding nights involved adequate sleep. The lack of metronome clicks did not seem to be a problem. This gave me more flexibility. I was able to keep a fairly steady pace from the bottom to the top, but there was room for some slight variation in speed in response to messages from the body.

Water was different this year. I overheard one of the volunteers telling another volunteer that racers should not receive water in the stairwell. They would need to step back beside the hallway on the landing. Thankfully, one volunteer in the first third of the race did not know this. She had given me water in the stairwell as I went chugging past. That was the last water I would taste before the top. There was no way I wanted to sacrifice 10-20 seconds of time to step back from the stairs to receive water when it would be available at the top in a few minutes. But I really did miss the water. Thankfully, I was well hydrated before the race (from drinking first thing in the morning and from sipping water until starting the race).

At the top, we met several people with fascinating stories. Jim Harris did not climb this time. His wife, Cindy, was in the race, which she completed in 15:54 (minutes:seconds). Jim had just completed a marathon race the previous day. I was amazed that he was able to drive up early Sunday morning (from Indianapolis, Indiana) the day after such a race.

We also met a couple of people who had missed their original flight from Los Angeles due to arriving late to the airport. They would have been in terminal 3 during the shooting if they had arrived on time. They were alive and well due to Providence at work--and their late arrival. We met another person who was in terminal 2 while the shooting was going on in terminal 3.

And then we met Gorge Heimann (there should be two dots over the "o" in Gorge, but this would not show up right in some computers). Gorge is from Germany. He pushed really hard, racing up the stairs. At one point, his glasses fell off his head. He had to turn back to retrieve them. He finished the race in 13:32 (min:sec). This is a mere 3 seconds behind the winner (Justin Stewart). Wow. That was close. Gorge would have been the winner of the race. He might have even set a course record (the previous record was 13:03). But the glasses fell off. He had a really good attitude. He didn't make a big deal about it. He just shared his experience. I imagine we will see him again next year as he comes to beat his own best time.

Jason and I each did better than in previous years. Our times were:

Jason (21:48), (2 out of 19 in the "under 12" age category), (171 out of 2321 who climbed in this race)

Glenn (18:26), (11 of 182 in the "40-49" age category), (44 out of 2321 who climbed in this race)

(actually, I should be 12 out of 182 since one of the top three, overall winners was 40)

Here are official times for the 2013 Willis Tower Stair Climb Race.

What a fun day. I love these races. Now for the school part. I came away with six lessons for the 2014 race.

1. Get better rest in the week before the race. This has to do with sleep and tapering. I need to avoid those late nights during the week before the race. And no more last-minute workouts with extra weight in the days before a race.

2. No more metronome clicks. This was a positive take away. It is something that I tried that had reached its time. I think the metronome was a valuable aid in my past. But it is time for a different method now. The previous method was great for getting me to a certain point. But it is beginning to interfere with the next steps.

3. Don't hold back as much. As tired as I was, there was still something left in the tank. I still had a little energy left at the top. That means that I didn't push quite hard enough. This one is tricky. If we push too hard, we could fade at the end. (Bradey Renshaw had to climb on hands and knees the last few floors of his first Willis Tower Race. He is extremely fast, but underestimated the impact of such a tall building.) I need a slight increase in output. My heart rate was 184 bpm (if I remember right--there was nothing to write on after taking the pulse, and we came down after 30-60 minutes). This heart rate, though high, is significantly lower than my heart rate in a hard training session (which can go up to 190 or even close to 200 bpm). The margin is small, but there is still room for more.

4. Train more for mental toughness. I do pretty well with the mental toughness. But there is room for improvement. The main thing I did this time was to focus on steps, and sing songs (in my head--not out loud) to distract me from the pain. Most of the way up, I was singing "Onward Christian Soldiers." It has a nice, fast march beat that fits my pace.

5. Work on improving my step pattern. The Willis Tower has an awkward step formation. Like other buildings that I use for training, the Willis tower has one landing in between most floors (there are some strange exceptions). Most buildings where I train have a stair pattern that is helpful for speed climbing. The top step (actually the landing) at the top of a flight of stairs is exactly even with the first step of the next flight of stairs. In other words, you can draw a straight line across the landing. At one end of the line, the landing forms the top step of the lower flight of stairs. At the other end, the first step rises above the landing.

But things are different at the Willis Tower. If you were to draw that line across the landing, the top step of the lower flight of stairs is still reaching this line (it is the landing itself). But the next flight of steps is set back a few inches. Essentially, the first step is not a step up. It is still part of the landing. I need to do some kind of practice that will help minimize steps on the landing.

6. I think that I should train to jog in the little connection points where we move from one section of the building to another. (In the Willis Tower, the stairs do not go up from the bottom to the top. They go up maybe 30 floors or so, and then everything shifts over a bit. After another 30 floors or so, things shift again.) This year, I walked quickly through each of these shift points. I need to push better through these shifts. Probably an all out run would take too much energy. It would likely be best to jog through these sections (like we do in the sections between towers in the Presidential Towers races).

Aside from this, we need to keep applying the lessons learned in previous races.

We are looking forward to our next race in 2014. Actually the next one should be in the Oakbrook Terrace Tower. We are inviting as many friends as possible to join us in this race.

If you want to see pictures of the race, you can follow the steps below: