Starting last year, I was part of a committee at work to organize an IBM team to climb the CN Tower as part of one of the semi-annual climbs. That also put me on the hook to actually take part in the climb (which I had never done before), since it would look bad if the organizers didn’t go to the event they organized right?
I didn’t really want to do the climb, but a lot of people had done it and so it seemed like a good challenge to take on. We had a display during lunch one day at work, trying to get people to participate; but most people just looked at our sign, grimaced, and declined. Maybe I would regret taking on this challenge.
To prepare, I started walking up from the parking lot to my apartment (16 floors), and that was a tough challenge. I would get up to my floor and be out of breath. And it wasn’t even 16 floors, because the stairs didn’t go down to the parking garage, so I had the ride the elevator up to the 2nd floor in order to start climbing!
Oh well, I wouldn’t let a little training deter me from my goal. The CN Tower is only some 144 stories or 1776 steps or 10x my tiring “training” run! So I went on Saturday and struggled up the tower with a couple of other people from work. It was a great exertion, but I didn’t need any paramedics and made it to the top in under 30 minutes.
It feels good to have done it, but I think this was a once-in-a-lifetime thing (unless there’s a really good reason for me to go again)! The whole experience was tough; waiting in multiple lines to go up, getting kicked back to the registration area since I tried to sneak in my cellphone, the actual climb, and lining up for even longer to take the elevator down.
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