Well folks, Sunday was the Big Climb and I conquered the Columbia Tower (and by “conquered” I mean “trudged up a ton of steps in a mediocre time”). The morning of the Climb I awoke to the alarm and begrudgingly rolled out of bed. I had considered blowing it off and sleeping in, but I made a big fuss about it and bugged a ton of people to donate money, so I felt shamed into going through with it. Teresa wanted me to get in a 20 minute warmup before doing the Climb, so I decided to run to the Columbia Tower (it took a groggy, trotting me 14 minutes to go nearly 2 miles —...

My coworker Mike put together a team to do Seattle’s annual Big Climb event (this year it’s on March 22), and I am one of his easily winded participants (go Team Flabalanche!). What is the Big Climb? Well, every year the Leukemia and Lymphoma Society organizes a race to raise money for leukemia, lymphoma, Hodgkin’s disease and myeloma research. The race consists of climbing 69 flights of stairs up the Columbia Center in downtown Seattle. That’s right, your favorite mediocre athlete is going to try and run up 69 flights of stairs. Me, aka the person incapable of running along a...