2012 Bop to the Top

One America Tower (37 Floors)

Indianapolis, IN

First race of 2012 and it went off with a bang.  Traveled to Indianapolis, IN for the 29th year of the Bop to the Top stair climb race.  In the stair climbing world the 37 floor race is considered a sprint race.  I was excited going into this race because sprint races are my speciality when it comes to stairs.  A guy by the name of Marty Wilkey has won the past 7 or 8 races here averaging winning times around 4 minutes each year.  I went into the race confident that I would at least be competitive with Marty and other top racers at the event.  Initially my plan was to go behind Marty and just try to catch him in the stairwell and pace off him and then kick it in, since Ive never done this building before, I didnt know what to expect.  It turned out since its a shorter race the time between runners was 20seconds, so I decided to just go first and go for it, no looking back.  It worked out I guess.  I turned in a time of 3:38, bettering second place by 23 seconds, and in a sprint stair climb over 37 floors that a good margin of victory.  But I didnt stop there.  I continued on to compete in the triple climb race.  In this race you had 3 hours to do 3 climbs, where they would add up your 3 climbs and total them.  In this race I was pretty exhausted from the single climb and really wasnt worrying about my rest between each climb as much as I think I should have been.  In the end it tured out fine.  I turned in anote win.  Winning both races at this event has never been done before either in its 29 year history, so it was a real honor to win both. 

Overall, it was a great event, it was a very well ran event.  Got to see some of my college teamamtes at IUPUI as well.  Had mexican after the race too which was a bad idea.  I will definitely be back for this event next year. http://www.tuxbro.com/results.html