My First Race Recap in Five Months!

I ran an in-person 5K race last weekend – my first since the end of October – and I ran it with my best running buddy!

This was probably the 8th or 9th 5K race I’ve run with JJ, although a couple of those were

My One-Mile Trek Into the Sky (Trek Up The Tower Race Recap)

It takes a special kind of nutjob to compete in a vertical mile stair race, because the goal is completely nutty: to climb stairs until you reach one mile of vertical gain. It’s a lot of stairs. Think about how the second floor of your house may be 10 feet off the ground, and compare that to the finish line for this race being one mile off the ground. It’s exhausting just to think about, and as someone who accomplished a vertical mile yesterday, I can tell you it’s way more exhausting in real life. So, yea, I guess that makes me a nutjob… but I wouldn’t have it any other way!

There aren’t any staircases that stretch a mile into the sky, so a vertical mile stair race has to happen in a skyscraper, with participants climbing those stairs over and over again.

I Felt Like a Total Moron At My First 2020 Race… But At Least I Have a Good Story to Tell! (Bop to the Top Race Recap)

My goal for 2020 is to compete in five stair races I’ve never done before, in cities where I’ve never raced before. I’m already 20% done with my goal, because on January 18th, I competed in the 37th annual Bop to the Top in Indianapolis. It’s one of the oldest stair races in the country, in the second-tallest building in Indiana, OneAmerica Tower.

OneAmerica Tower is 38 stories, but the race is 36, with a total of 780 steps. When you register, you can sign up for a Single Climb, or the Triple Step, which is three climbs. I signed up for both. If I’m driving five hours each way to compete, I want to compete as much as I can! Add up the two events, and that’s four climbs up the stairwell. 144 floors. 3,120 steps. But, due to a ridiculously stupid and completely avoidable mistake on my part, I ended up climbing even more than that!

I Competed in the Dallas Vert Mile and Climbed More Stairs In One Day Than EVER Before

I was lying on the carpet, unable to move. Pain and fatigue pulsed through my body, and every limb felt heavy, like I was being pressed into the floor. A woman appeared, looking down at me. “Are you finished?” I nodded, and she disappeared, only to return a few seconds later, ripping open a little plastic pouch with her teeth. She pulled a gorgeous multi-colored medal from the pouch, and I reached up, slowly, and took it from her. I pushed a few words out, in between gasps for air: “It’s the most beautiful thing I’ve ever seen.” She laughed and walked away, and as I rested the medal on my chest, my vision suddenly got cloudy. My eyes were filling with tears, and I started sobbing, nearly 500 feet above the Dallas sidewalk.

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Before I begin this recap of my experiences at the Dallas Vert Mile, I want to remind everyone reading this that

Why Yes, That IS My Face on 4,000 Race Bibs!

My race recap from the Stair Climb for Los Angeles at the US Bank Tower is a thorough account of what happened last Friday (read it here!), but there’s one major thing I left out. They put me on all the bibs!

That’s me, looking up at the building! How sweet is that? I wish I could say it was a surprise for me, but it wasn’t. A couple months ago,