Cowboy Hazel

A week ago yesterday, I ran up the 86 flights of stairs that lead to the top of the Empire State Building. After seeing the $100 price tag for the race this year, I had decided that my days of stair climbing were over. But then, our P.R. guy sent me an email asking if I'd like to run in the media heat, for free. Heck yes I would! Note: that was P.R. was for public relations, not personal record… The other kind of P.R. showed up too though – I finished in 14:35, which was considerably faster than my climbs in 2010 and 2011. That was a real surprise as I hadn't climbed more than two flights of stairs consecutively since, oh, last February…

Being in a smaller heat was fun, it felt more competitive since I wasn't up against a bunch of guys who were way more talented than me. I knew going into it that Jeff would beat me to the top – he's better at hills and also at shorter stuff in general, plus he beat me by a good amount last year – so I wasn't looking for the win, but I thought second place was a possibility when looking around at the other 22 competitors on the starting line. Turns out that wasn't to be, either. An editor from Vogue of all places jumped out into second place right at the start and although I stayed right on his heels for the first 60 floors, I was never able to catch him. Around floor 70, he found an extra gear and zoomed to the top while I struggled just to keep moving. As you might expect, there was a fair amount of kidding around the office when everyone learned who had beat me.

Since then, I've been super busy and haven't found the time to write. I traveled back to Pennsylvania Thursday morning, then back to NYC Friday night. I ran 14 miles with Antonio and Helen in Central Park Saturday, then tried to catch up on rest before heading uptown for the Millrose Games, knowing it would be a long night. I shot 1,026 photos up there, almost all from the infield, and then had to narrow that down to 12 for a slideshow. Having media credentials and being able to be so close to the action was phenomenal. I basically volunteered myself for eight hours of extra work with no pay, but I would absolutely do it again. I had so much fun and got such a rush from seeing all the amazing performances.

Back to Pennsylvania again on Monday morning and ever since, I've just been trying to play catch up. There are approximately a million-and-a-half projects that I'm involved in at work right now and, as if that weren't enough, I've been getting a decent amount of urgent consulting work thrown my way too. Add in running – I have 68.4 miles over the last seven days – and you can see why it took eight days for me to post my race report. That's the irony, I suppose – when you have cool stuff going on to write about, you don't have time to write it.