2012 Oakbook Terrace Stair Climb

2012 Oakbrook Terrace Stair Climb
31 floors
1st Place (Single Climb) 2:41
1st Place (Tiple Climb) 9:19 (2:41,3:05,3:33)

This was a fun event and fun weekend to get away.  I drove up to Lake Zurich in the northwest suburbs to stay with my friend for the night before the race.  Doing this made things easy for me traveling wise and it was much appreciated.  The night before I also got to see a bunch of my college teammates over some dinner at a rather risque restaurant called Tilt a Kilts where girls wore skimpy pieces of cloth that barely covered anything.  One waitress even yelled across the table, "Hey bald guy, hey baldie, what do you want to drink?"  I said well there goes your tip, Ill have a water.  Good times.  Anyway, got to bed around 11pm, maybe a little later than I would have liked but when you get to catch up with old friends time flies.

Race Day:

Woke up 3 hours before the race and had my breakfast of champions.  I usually or try to have the same thing before every race.  Two pieces of toast, either with Nutella or crunchy peanut butter, a banana, dry cereal, a quarter of a glass of some sort of fruit juice, and water.  Got dressed and packed said bye to my good friend amigo and drove 40 minutes south to Oakbrook.  Arrived on time, checked in and took some pictures and footage of the power hour or ultimate climb.  Some of the others decided to do the hour climb so I hung around and threw in some words of encouragement.  Once the ultimate climb was finished the triple climb began.  Jesse Berg and I were really the only two elite in the triple climb.  Jesse went first and I went 5 or so seconds after him.  From the get go i went for it, since it was only 31 floors and the first climb counted towards the single climb results.  I could hear Jesse one or two flights above me the entire way up.  I never saw him though.  I tried turning it on the last couple floors but couldn't quite catch him.  since I started 5 or so seconds behind him though, I put 2 second on him.  I finished my first climb in 2:41 and Jesse was 2:43.  I clocked myself at 2:39 which I thought was pretty accurate.  At every local American Lung Assoc. stair climb they use the same timing company and they unanimously are 2 seconds slow.  Even a week later in the Hilton stair climb, same timing company, had me 2 seconds slower than what I had on my wrist watch.  Im pretty darn accurate when it comes to timing myself on climbs I think.  there must a 2 second delay in the process.  Anyways, my second and third climbs were decent.  Nothing earth shattering.  Jesse and I decided to take 10-12 minutes between each climb so that we were on the same playing field rest wise.  The race is short but the staircase is not too conducive to a fast time.  Its broken up by a landing between each floor.  Which when you spend more time turning that slows things down.  Unlike, what I call its sister building the Springfield Hilton which is 32 floors and pretty close in the step count.  The Oakbrook Terrace tower has 680 steps while the Hilton in Springfield has 530.  The Hilton is a much faster tower and race because it does not have a  landing between each floor, so it is a super fast building to race.

Speaking of the devil the Springfield Hilton stair race is just 6 days after the Oakbrook Terrace stair climb.  at first I was signed up to do both the Power hour climb at Oakbrook and then 6 days later do the Hilton Ultimate (1 hour) stair race, then head to Hancock Center in Chicago a week after that and expect to do well at Hancock...I dont think so.  I called the race director at Oakbrook and changed to the triple climb to save the legs a little bit.  So far I think it was the right move, since the Hancock tower is the main focus of the 3 races in 3 weeks.

Results:  http://theracershub.com/results_view.php?id=1551&result_type=file&PHPSESSID=2d463771cdd89213817e30a395c5c962