The X Gym formed a four person hit squad for the climb up the tallest building in San Francisco last Saturday (3/27/2010), and ended up knocking off the competition once again! For results, click here. As you will see, the X Gym is the only team on the page with more than one class winner. In fact, the X Gym team had three class winners and two new course records!
Here are our winners:
- Kourtney Dexter was the star again as she won overall for women, and broke the course record for this 35 year old stair race (the 4th time hosted by the Lung Association). She also placed 11th overall – including dudes – out of almost 1,000 men and women! This was her first out-of-state race and it continues her perfect win streak of 6 for 6 races. She also now holds the course records for all three buildings she has competed in. This win moved her up to 21st place in the world rank too. She is still relatively new to this sport, so she is continuing to get even faster every race. Can you tell we are proud?
- Mike Cartmell won the 60-70 age group and reset the overall course record for his category as well.
- Mark Trahanovsky won the 50-60 age group (again).
- I (PJ) won 2nd in the 40-50 age group, behind Mark Dolan, the same overall race winner from last year. I had a similar timing chip mishap that Jesse experienced at the Big Climb (see previous post), except mine was at the finish line instead of the starting line. They did catch it however, and the correction moved me from 8th place to 7th overall. As some of you know, 7 is my favorite number, so I was super stoked! My race goal is always top 10, but I secretly wish for 7th every time.
This race went a little better for me than the Big Climb this year. As you may recall, I bonked at floor 50 of the Big Climb due to my failed training method experiment this time around (see previous post). So I planned on using my “crutch technique” in San Francisco to account for the deficit in leg strength, and it worked pretty well. This BOA climb is listed as 52 floors, but it’s actually more like 56 if you count the un-numbered mezzanine and mechanical floors, and much taller in vertical feet than the 56 floor WAMU building here in Seattle, so it took longer to complete. It wasn’t quite as many vertical feet as the Columbia Tower, but it was close!
We had a great time and got to hang out as a team quite a bit for good quality “step” brother and “step” sister time.
Our next race is on 4/24/10 up the AON building in LA , which is indeed taller than our Columbia Tower, so we’ll see how that goes! Mark, Mike and I will be there for the X Gym, but running under Mark’s company team, “West Coast Labels.” We will be wearing our X Gym patches though, so the X Gym will be well represented! Kourtney is thinking about competing with us in the 75 story US Bank tower race this September, possibly even with her dad!
There is also a rumor circulating about a short Smith Tower race this summer, and I’m even thinking about organizing an outdoor climb this year so stay tuned!
For full overall results, click here. For age category results, click here.
