Seattle's Big Climb

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Trip Start Mar 25, 2012 Trip End Mar 25, 2012

  Seattle, Washington
Sunday, March 25, 2012

I signed up for the Seattle/Alaska chapter of The Leukemia & Lymphoma Society (LLS) Big Climb. This is their largest fundraiser of the year. All proceeds go towards LLS' mission to cure leukemia, lymphoma, Hodgkin's disease, and myeloma and to improve the quality of life for patients and their families.

https://secure3.convio.net/llswa/site/SPageNavigator/BC_homepage

Besides fund raising for the group this also means that I get to participate. The event entails climbing the stairwell of Seattle's tallest building! Sixty-nine (69) floors! That is 1311 steps!!!!! This may prove once and for all that I am insane. :-) Actually I did this once before in 2008 so maybe it is not so crazy to try it again. There will be about 6000 others also doing it...hope they step around me rather than just marching over the top as I lay gasping on the steps! 

I will be training between now and then. This is a good way to get ready for the 2012 hiking season and I will try to make the most of it. Really the only way to train for climbing 1311 steps is to climb stairs every day and work my way up to it. There are two places where I have started doing this. The most convenient is in the building where I work. Basically there are four flights of stairs which I can cycle up and down on. I need to work up to at least 10 consecutive cycles by this time next month. So far I am panting after 3 consecutive cycles. But I am managing to do 10 or more per day by resting a couple of hours between sets. So that is encouraging. But climbing up and down a ugly stairwell feels like work.


The other opportunity for me is a park near my home. Marine View Park in my city of Normandy Park is about a 1.5 mile walk from home and offers a 1400 foot long trail that drops about 900 feet to Puget Sound. It is not all stairs but it is all steep! This is a much more pleasant option than a stairwell. But it requires that I be home during daylight. They close the park at night. It is a beautiful park and the beach seldom has more than one or two people on it. It is a really good workout climbing out of there as well.

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The Columbia Tower	Location of Columbia Tower	Marine View Park road   Comments!	Stairs to the beach   Comments!
Driftwood and Puget Sound	Moss cover snag along trail	Trail to Puget Sound