blog.zgraggen.name  All-day insanity or I have a blog too!

After doing the Empire State Building Run-Up at the beginning of February I also signed up for the Rockefeller Run-Up. So I will have conquered the two most prestige buildings in NYC in one month. I looked forward to this experience, since I told myself that this is just for fun. After all it is my 3rd stair race and with the big number of racers (~1000) it might be hard to have a good result anyway. So I didn’t do my preparation as precise as for other races which I obviously had to pay for during the race…
Talking to a racer which I remembered from the last race revealed that I can expect about 4min faster time then in the Empire State Building Run-Up which means that I should be able to finish it under 10min.

This race was a little different to the last one. People got started every few seconds. So there was no pushing and elbowing at the start. After talking to the helpers, they told me that there is no specific order and that I can start first in my coral. This meant that there was a 5min gab between the last person from the previous coral and me.
When I started, I tried to pace myself (emphasis is on tried). On floor 6 I checked my watch and noticed that it wasn’t running yet. I guessed I was climbing for about 30 seconds. But I didn’t know exactly. Because of that I didn’t know how I’m doing and just kept my pace. Then on floor 15, there was group of several people chit-chatting and blocking the whole stair. Once I noticed that I clapped my hands twice and screamed “SORRY”. They must have been so surprised that they didn’t move. So I had to wait and then squeeze through then. (Thanks for making the race more challenging for me otherwise it would have been too easy, right?) Unfortunately, this pattern repeated itself a few more times. But I also have to say that there were many racers who made space for me and were walking/running on the outside of the stairs. Thanks!
After one third of the race, on floor 22 I check my watch. I tried to come up with a reasonable end time, but the time I missed for the first few floors made it too hard to calculate anything. Besides, I realized that I started way to fast and my legs were already burning. To give my quads a little break I started using both arms on the same handrail (like I would pull my body up on a rope). This seemed to work pretty well, except that it made the breathing even harder.
On floor 28 a helper asked me if I wanted some water. I confirmed and received a bottle. Between heavy breathing, I took one sip. A medic which was there asked me if I wanted a break to rest. My automatic answer was an upset/confident “NO!”. I must have said it quite loud since the medic was a little shocked. But I didn’t have time for excuses so I threw the bottle back to the helper with a “thanks” and off I went again. This few second of rest gave me additional strength and the pulling with the arms must have helped too, so that I was able to increase my speed again. From then on I switched techniques every few floors, I used the arm technique whenever there were no people in the way and run without the rail when I had to overtake people.
One floor 44 I checked my watch again. Two thirds and I was still not able to make any sense out of the numbers. But even thought I was suffering I figured I can do another 22 floors. On floor 49 a helper said “20 floors to go”. This confused me a little. I knew that my math skills are limited while racing, but this guy was way off. At least so I thought. And then I was in this pain/dream like state (similar to last race) and forgot about the race till floor 60. Where another helper said: “only 9 floors”. And then it downed upon me, I must have been wrong. The race goes till floor 69. (I later realized that we started on floor 3). Well, at this point it didn’t affect me at all. I mean giving up is not an option and how much worse could it get? So I just kept going till I was finally on top and crossed the finish line. Once again, I was barely able to stand, conveniently there was a bench a few steps after the finish line which I crashed on. After a while I realized that I didn’t stop my watch nor check the timer on the finish line. I glanced over and realized that I should have a time around 9min which made me happy.

What a race, I started too fast, screwed up time and floor count, and I don’t know my finisher time. But still I was happy! I guess that is because the pain started to go away and it was sunny outside. From the other stair races, I am used to coughing after the race (which I still have, 10 hours later), but this time I also had this strong taste of blood in my mouth.

After enjoying the scenic view for a while I went down to the base floor where I checked the rankings. I was surprised to see my name with two others on a separate list as the unofficial winners. (Unofficial because there were still people starting).

So then I had to wait for a whole hour till a lady came over to me and told me that the winners are final and how she should pronounce my name. I had to repeat my name a couple times and then she made a comment on her sheet, next to my name “Gweedo Zgrachen”. I had to smile, but at least this way she was able to pronounce my name during the ceremony. (At least more or less :-P)

0:08:53 to climb 66 floor/1215 steps

Here are the Result.

I’ll post some pictures here, once they are up.

Last fall I won the stair race here in Stamford (Tackle Trump Parc). I used this as a motivation to apply for the Empire State Building Run-Up which is an invitation based race. This means that you fill out an online form and tell them your last results and how good you are and then you hope they select you. This year there were 1200 applicants and 300 got selected. Luckily I was one of them.
Besides the triathlon training I do, I only did one stair training in Pittsburgh. I decided to enjoy this race as much as possible who knows if they will ever invite me again. But to my surprise I was super nervous the night before. So I decided to do some more preparation the night before the race. I read various article and watched youtube videos. It is obvious that the key to the race is the entrance to the narrow doorway. (Start) But all this youtube videos made me even more nervous. I decided that the only solution is to stay calm in the start chaos so I did some mental preparation and went to bed.
I felt good the next morning and traveled into NYC. The temperature was below freezing and it was foggy. So foggy, that I couldn’t see the top of the Empire State Building… Yes it is that tall. I got my race package and changed into my racing gear did a warm up and after two bathroom stops (Yes, I was still nervous) I was ready to go. We had to line up in the gathering area 15min before the start. And that is also were the race begins. When we were lead to the start there was pushing and elbowing to get further upfront. Apparently, everybody had the same goal: Starting from the front line. Somehow I managed to end up in the 3 line on the very left side behind the pool of the staring door (small pole). Well there was nothing to change now, at least there were 4 more rows behind me.
Suddenly the start signal. I don’t know how I managed to get past all the obstacles, but only a few second later I was a few feet away from the doorway still on the very left side. There was lots of pushing and people screaming: “Take it easy!”. I tried to stay mentally calm and endured the pushing and squeezing. (Don’t fight it go with the flow). 20 seconds after the start signal I had my first foot on the stair. But guess what so had many others… I was corned between people till about the 10th floor when crowd suddenly seemed to thin out. Then I realized why. Even though I tried to stay calm and didn’t start too fast with all the people around me. I was already tired after 10 floors, but I buried this thought again right away. I just kept going two steps at the time. There were still enough people around me which I had to pass. This made the next few floors go by quickly. On floor 20 we had to run through a hallway to the next stair. There were also some cups which water which I made use of. After the first sip I realized that I had to pay the toll for being nervous with my stomach. But who cares in a 12-15min race? I passed floor 30 with something over 4 minutes which made me happy. I needed several floors to calculate a potential end time, no wonder since all my blood must have been in my legs. Then I suddenly was in the zone till floor 50. That is when I realized that there is “only” as much left as when I did the race in Stamford. Considering my legs and breathing I wasn’t that confident anymore but I rationalized that I can endure this for a few more minutes. Around this time I had to overtake more and more women which started 5min ahead of the man, this made the race harder since I was only able to use one side of the hand rail and had to run on the outside.
I also tried to focused on not hunching over since that is what happens when you get tired while stair climbing. But it is so bad for the breathing because the size of the lungs get reduced. This kept me occupied till floor 65 that is where we had to crossover again to another stair. I took another sip of water to wet my mouth from the dry air and on I went.
The last 20 floors was a pure mind game. The legs were hurting and the lungs were burning the only thing in my body which was in favor of keep going was my brain!
And then a helper said taht there is only one floor left. It almost felt like waking up from a painful dream. I did this last flight and tried to run as quickly as possible around the observation deck to the finish. I passed the finish line with 13:56. I was supper happy for about one second till the pain hit me. Where did all my adrenalin go? I could barely stand and needed several minutes till I was thinking halfway clearly again. I’m so glad nobody was filming up there.
Unfortunately, it was still foggy and I couldn’t see anything up there. So I went to floor 61 where they served food and drinks.

Overall an awesome but painful experience! I finished 45 overall and 14 in my age group. Results here
Here is a video from last year. Which gives a good overall impression!

As with my last stair climb only a few hours later my legs are only tired (not sore) but my lungs are still hurting and I was coughing all day. (Ricola helped at least a little)

EDIT:
Here is a video from this year. You can see me at 1:21.
That was apparently filmed on floor 74. I didn’t even notice

As most of you know, I spend the last 3 weeks in Switzerland. So, yesterday it was time to fly back to the states. After a very short night (3h), since I had some farewell drinks with my friends. Once in the plane I was enjoying 3 movies (The Expendables, The other guys, Killers) which help to make the time pass faster. Also the service and food was really good. I should only fly with Swiss!
To my surprise, I made a new record at the US customs and border control. There wasn’t a line and I had only to wait about 5 minutes till I was granted access to the states. Once at home, I had just enough time to unpack my luggage before I had to leave again. Destination was Madison Square Garden in NYC. I had a ticket for the Rammstein concert.

The concert was amazing! I really enjoyed their live show! But the set up in Madison Square Garden wasn’t great at all. No Jumbo Tron for close ups, and the area where you could stand and dance in front of the state had only space for maybe 200 people. Fortunately, I had a good enough seat that it both wasn’t a big problem. It was a real spectacle, a burning man, lots of fire and pyrotechnic explosions. I would definitely recommend seeing them!

(pic source: http://www.fotocommunity.de/pc/pc/display/19529623)

This weekend I attended the Electric Zoo Festival on Randall’s Island in NYC. Even though no one wanted to join me, I decided to go anyway. And I am glad I did. It was well worth it and I even met some friends from UBS there.

The Festival was bigger than I expected. There were several 1000 if not even over ten thousand people. But luckily the event was well organized and I didn’t even have to wait at the entrance.

The crowd at the party was really interesting. Especially, the dressings of some of them were hilarious. One would expect people wearing going out, beach, hippy clothes. Since it was an electronic dance festival I also expected all the neon and furry rave wear. But I didn’t expect people dressing up in action heroes costumes like superman, iron man, boba fett and some of them were totally weird by wearing a ski dress or a frog costume. Well… I enjoyed it

The one big negative part of this event was the dust. Since, it was really hot and dry. The dancing on the ground resulted in a lot of dust which was picked up. This is a picture of my foot after the event.

There were many people with scarf’s around there faces which seemed funny to me. But soon, I realized that it was not only style but even more so protection from the dust. A few hours later my through was itching and my nose felt funny… so I wished I had one myself

Yes, it was electronic music so I enjoyed myself. But I have to say that it seemed fairly monotonous with a heavy focus on Electro/House. I would have wished to have a little more diversity in the 4 music tents. The best set I listened to was from Sander van Doorn! “Thanks! You made my day”

All in all it was a wonderful event!
Note to myself:
“Maybe next time I shouldn’t run 14miles beforehand :-)”

What a weekend! Amy was visiting me for several days and we had a great time together.
Let me just tell you the details for Saturday.

After a long jog (2 hours) to the Greenwhich beach we were ready for some more relaxing activities and headed into the city. As you might know the thing to do in the city is to go watch a musical. So we spontaneously decided to check out the ticket booth at time square if we could get tickets for an interesting afternoon show. To our surprise they still had tickets for Marry Poppins available which was on the top of our musical list.

Since we had some time left until the musical started we decided to visit the Guggenheim museum (Thanks @ UBS for the free entry). Most people know about me that I am not a very artsy guy, but I appreciate good craftsmanship which you certainly will find in most museums. That said, I was only enjoying a small part of the exhibition. Besides some wonderful art pieces, the Guggenheim was also showing many provoking pieces of art where I had a hard time to find the artistic value.

Then it was time for the musical. We really enjoyed the musical and got reminded of many memories we had from the movie. But I have to say I remembered the overall story a little different. It seems like I/we have to go back and watch the movie again.
We really enjoyed all the little “magic” things they did on stage. Overall, we liked the musical and would recommend it to everyone who knows and likes Mary Poppins.

After that we walked through the city to the Frying Pan. This is a bar on several barges at Pier 66 in NYC and is the place to be. We were lucky to get a table on the top deck on the very front, where we enjoyed a beer to close our excursion to the city.

After such a wonderful day, we knew there was only one word to describe this blog entry:
Supercalifragilisticexpialidocious

Pictures from this weekend

Another weekend and another trip to NYC… this time I was accompanied by Amy
Here are four more things, which I like to point out:

- Plaid Power: We saw the NYC Tartan Day Parade. And we happened to be there for exactly the 5min, when the bag pipers (or was it only one?) of Carnegie Mellon walked by. Thanks to Amy’s loud cheering we are now proud owner of a yellow “Plaid power” towel from Carnegie Mellon.

- MoMA stands for the Museum of Modern Art. While entered the museum I was contemplating to leave right away because there were several hundred other people trying to get admission as well. But as a UBS employee I had free admission (incl. a free ticket for Amy) and was able to queue at a special desk. Since it is the modern art museum there is a lot of peculiar art which would need some time to get used to. Especially, the exhibition from Marina Abramović which included life performance and loads of nudity. The highlights for me were “Starry Night - Vincent van Gogh“, “Water Lilies - Claude Monet” and the Picasso exhibitions.

- The View. This is a restaurant in the 48 floor at the time square. And it is the only rotating restaurant in NYC, even though the rotation is not as smooth as it could be it is a great experience and the food is delicious. Definitive worth a visit before a show. Make sure to make a reservation and tell the waiter what time your show starts. They will help you that you stay on time Video on the way down in the elevator.

- Lion King. My first show at the Broadway! I guess there is not much more to say… I liked the musical and I would definitely recommend it.

Here are some pictures…

The last two weekends I did some trips to New York City. Since, I am only 45min (by train) away from NYC it is a perfect spott for daylong trips. And there is also more than enough to see. I have seen many neighborhoods in NYC and I am always amazed how different each neighborhood looks almost as you are in a different city. I would like to point out four highlights which I liked.
- High Line an old train line which was transformed into a walkway
- Williamsburg in Brooklyn, upcoming neighborhood. Nice bars and restaurants
- Cathedral of Saint John the Divine, New York which is supposedly the 4th largest Christian church in the world
- Grand Central Station where my train arrives and leaves

More trips to follow…

Here are some pictures.