Swissotel the Stamford Vertical Marathon

This morning, I participated in the Swissotel the Stamford Vertical Marathon, a delightful 73-storey staircase-climbing challenge up Southeast Asia's tallest hotel. I hadn't trained for it much -- except a single short 15-min session in my gym's StairMaster about two weeks ago -- so I wasn't expecting to do a Personal Best at today's event. Rather, I had decided to enjoy the leisurely ascent up the tower armed with a Canon PowerShot in one hand -- which turned out to be not the wisest of strategies since that left me with only one free hand to haul myself along the handrail up the stairwell. Nevertheless, it was enjoyable. At one point I felt like throwing up in the stairwell, but I didn't, and I made it to the helipad in relatively good form with suffering any cramps. Given my laid-back speed, I didn't beat my record of 10 min 31 sec (set in 2004) and only managed a 13 min 35 sec, but who cares! :D I had great company for the race -- BoSe, nerradhog, StarDust, alphagirl, ripley, chantelle, lengloi, zco, walfisch, babumouse, Nan Yan, Chee Meng, etc - and that's more important :)