Climbing the Seventh Tallest Free-Standing Structure in the World, I realized three (3) things:

1) This is a spectacularly boring undertaking. There are no windows until the top and no view beyond the bottom of the person in front of you. It’s basically vertical NASCAR – 10 steps up, turn right, 10 steps up, turn right – two flights per floor. … Lather, rinse, repeat. … Lather, rinse, repeat. Until the 67th floor when you have to step out onto a landing, turn left and ascend a single, thigh-shredding 16-step flight. (YOU’VE GOT TO BE FUCKING KIDDING ME? 16 STAIRS? SERIOUSLY?) You would curse too if you were two-thirds of the way done, had settled into a plodding, steady, dependable rhythm and had just learned that your quadriceps were going to be run through a 16-step cheese-grater. Yes, the six extra steps made a difference, along with the fact that they decided to add a left turn to our repertoire. Ten steps up, turn left, 10 steps up, turn left – they were only about 16 floors too late to balance us out, but I figured it’d even out… until I arrived at Floor 90, when they decided to run four flights per floor: Six steps, left, six steps, left, six steps, left, six steps, left… I’m getting dizzy here. What floor are we on again?

2) This is a spectacularly sweaty undertaking. We were in Chicago. The second-coldest I’ve ever been in my life was in Chicago. It was 50 degrees when we left the hotel at 7:45 and took a cab the 1.6 miles to Willis (ne Sears) Tower because we were afraid to put any extra mileage on our legs before our big ascent and because we didn’t want to freeze to death en route. Sadly, the stairwells are not cooled by the wind-chill factor of the Windiest City: The higher we climbed, the harder people breathed, the more people we encountered (because we were overtaking them – or they were overtaking us)… and the warmer it got. An explanation: Engineers do not pressurize or air-condition skyscraper stairwells because they don’t want fires to have an oxygen-rich environment to run up. This is why running up stairs in super-tall buildings is akin to exercising at altitude. Your legs will be on fire. Your lungs will be on fire, but your environment will not be engulfed in flames because the engineers are not circulating air while you’re circulating their stairwell. I wore my standard 5K apparel – cropped running tights and a short-sleeved T-shirt. Starting around Floor 34, sweat was dripping off my forehead. This was right after Floor 33 – the first “bail-out” floor where you could say “No mas” and take the air-conditioned elevators down – and coincidentally, the height of the tallest building we ever climbed in Phoenix. At Floor 50, I wished I’d worn my short-shorts. At Floor 67 (see cheese-grater), I recalled the August armpits of my home state of Louisiana. At Floor 80, I wanted to be climbing nekkid. It wasn’t all sweat and tears: Around Floor 90, we saw spots of blood, dripping down the stairs. No, it was not mine.

3) This really wasn’t was hard as I thought it would be. Yes, we climbed the Tallest Building in North America, which is also the Tallest Building in the Western Hemisphere, and which was the Tallest Building in the World from its completion in 1973 until it was surpassed by the Petronas Twin Towers in Malaysia in 1998 (which might be our next conquest). Today, despite the architectural onslaughts from the Far East and Middle East and other unnamed points east where engineers can erect their wet dreams, the Willis Tower is still the SEVENTH TALLEST FREESTANDING STRUCTURE IN THE WORLD… and might I add, THE KNOWN UNIVERSE. (There is a difference between the tallest building and the tallest freestanding structure) Either way, we climbed that bitch. And we even walked to breakfast at the legendary Lou Mitchell’s Bakery afterward. I woke up this morning, rolled out of bed and walked to the toilet without crying. And then I checked the results.

I finished in 1,342nd place of 2,500 climbers in 36 minutes, 21 seconds. (The winner finished in 13:03 – yes, you read that correctly: 13 minutes and 3 seconds). I finished 149th of 301 in my age-group (30-39), and unofficially, I was the fastest woman from Arizona in my age-group. Yes, I was climbing with my Team Limoncello co-founder Kellee Stooks of Phoenix, but she’s not in my age group, and she finished with the same time as me, though one place in front of me (thanks to my slowing her ass down). She was 99th of 201 in her age group.

The best part is, we were mid-pack. I never finish mid-pack. I will admit to having finished unabashedly last in events prior to this date, but this day was my Everest, my Boston Marathon, my Daytona Beach – all rolled into one. Being a mid-pack finisher while climbing the seventh tallest freestanding structure in the world is pretty freakin’ cool, my friend.

Check out my slideshow from the race.

And if I can do it, YOU CAN TOO. In fact, if you can run / jog / walk a 5K, you too can climb the seventh tallest freestanding structure in the world and live to tell about it.

All you have to do is sign up. Unlike the Empire State Building stair climb, which is an invitation-only race organized by the snobs who put on the New York City Marathon, Skyrise Chicago is open to all comers. You don’t have to qualify; you just have to raise $100 for the Rehabilitation Institute of Chicago, their designated charity. You get to climb higher than the sorry 102nd-floor of the third-tallest building in America, the fourth-tallest building in the Western Hemisphere and only the 11th-tallest structure in the world. Even better, you don’t have to be invited by some asshole New Yorker.

That’s a win in my book.

And if we can train for Skyrise Chicago in Arizona (where the tallest building is 40 stories and the public can’t access it), you can train for the Tallest Building in the Western Hemisphere, regardless of where you live. It’s called running… and StairMasters… and hiking… and breaking and entering. Oddly, Phoenix’s Piestewa Peak is exactly the same height as Willis Tower (and I would still rather climb that sweaty stairwell in August with 2,500 of my closest friends than hike that mountain ever again – but it provided a natural proxy for our ascent). If you don’t have access to a mountain of similar elevation, you can always try non-criminal trespass: Though commercial office buildings almost always require key-card access to their stairwells, most high-rise hotels do not. With your climbing buddy, take the elevator to the floor with the fitness center (usually on Floors 2-4) so you look like you know where you’re going. Walk to the end of the hall toward the exit signs. Test the stairwell doorway: Have your friend go inside the stairwell, while you stand outside and make sure the door doesn’t lock. If it doesn’t lock, begin your training program, i.e. CLIMB. Once you get to the top floor, take the elevator back down to the fitness center floor (enjoy the air-conditioning and the break for your knees). Lather, rinse, repeat.

The logistics: At Skyrise Chicago, elite climbers (see winner, 13:03) launched between 6AM and 8AM. Everyone else (i.e., us) chose the 30-minute interval between 8AM and 11AM that best suited our climbing style. We decided earlier would be better to avoid stairwell carnage (and avoid becoming stairwell carnage ourselves) so we chose 8:30-9 AM. Arrive 30 minutes prior to launch. Find the friendly volunteer holding the placard for your queue. Line up behind them and get ready to rhumba. The line moves in an orderly manner, with runners departing at 8-second intervals. They include signs inside the stairwell to keep you entertained: You have now climbed higher than the Roman Coliseum… the Taj Mahal… the Statue of Liberty… the St. Louis Gateway Arch… the Eiffel Tower… the third-tallest building in America that happens to be only the tallest building in the state of New York.

My heart rate averaged 168 beats per minute over 36 minutes and change. Maximum was 179 – my highest recorded on this heart-rate monitor and just one beat below the official Maximum Heart Rate for a 40-year-old ticker (220 – 40 = 180). I sustained 93% of my max for about a half-hour… and lived to tell about it. Surprisingly, my lungs felt like they would give out long before my legs (see sweaty, oxygen-deprived environment, above). The actual climbing wasn’t hard: Step up flat-footed so you engage the big muscles of your bacon-fueled glutes, hamstrings and quadriceps, rather than wear out the tiny muscles of your calves. Make sure you alternate lead legs. Use the handrails – it’s what they’re there for. Accept water at the designated water stations. Don’t throw your cups in the stairwell – slippage hazard, hello! Thank the volunteers who fan you with their poster-board signs – let me tell you, those wonderful waftings at Floors 40, 48, 56, 67 (DAMN YOU, LEFT TURN!), and 70-on-up were a huge lifesaver. God bless you, Anonymous Maintenance Man at Floor 102 who left the door open, pouring the sweet loveliness of air-conditioned goodness into our sweaty faces.

The single hardest part about it was overtaking other climbers. Standing in line prior to launch, Kellee and I met two guys from Seattle (where you cannot climb the Space Needle). They’d done a few big climbs like this, and their motto was “Start Slow and Taper Off” – actually a very sound strategy: When I had 25-year-old legs, I climbed the 72-story Bank of America Plaza, the tallest building in Dallas, (3rd tallest building in Texas and 22nd tallest building in the United States). As I was a bad-ass back then (or maybe just a dumb-ass), I decided I’d climb two-at-a-time. That lasted about four floors. Then I started running… and that lasted another six floors. Then I was just climbing with howls of pain shooting through my legs. Suffice it to say, I learned my lesson: You really want to settle in to a sustainable pace… and that’s hard to do when you come upon someone who’s just a half-step slower than you. Then you have to turn on the after-burners and pass their not-quite-as-fast-as-you ass. It’s harder than it sounds: Over a long distance in a road race when you have a lot of bail-out room on either side, it’s easy to overtake someone. In a standard stairwell (5 feet across), not so much, because they want you climbing single-file, passing on the left (when you’re turning right… passing on the right when you’re turning left) – which means they are always on the inside rail, and thus have the geographic advantage. In such a short space, you actually have to run to get around them… and in a hot, sweaty stairwell that burst lasts about four flights.

Then you get to the water stop to catch your breath… and they re-pass you again. FUCK.

But the frustration lasts only until you hit the 103rd floor and emerge from your tunnel of body odor into the blinding light of the Chicago morning – 1,353 feet above ground – and you realize, “Hey, I just climbed the Tallest Building in the Western Hemisphere!”

It really does hit you in the face… along with that blessed blast of air-conditioning.

It’s safe to say I will never summit Everest… or Denali… or even the third-tallest building in the United States… but from this point forward, I can say that I have climbed the Tallest Building in America which is also the Tallest Building in the Western Hemisphere.

Watch that first step – it’s a doozy – but it makes the last one well worthwhile.

Thanks again to my friends Dave and Lisa Dinsmore, Ana Menendez, Kevin Lyons and sweet husband, Patrick Bertinelli, for sponsoring my climb. It was an outstanding event and benefited a great cause – The Rehabilitation Institute of Chicago (whose services I did not need after I finished climbing). Whew.