3:21

"What's 3:21?" you ask. Is it Cranky's marathon PR time? Nope. Is it a reference to Peter 3:21, the line that states that baptism is necessary for salvation? Nope, not that either (that was a google thing, I don't know that off the top of my head, don't worry!). Is it a reference to J.S. Bach, Matthew Broderick, or Rosie O'Donnell's birthday? No. It's my time in the race I did today. And we're not talking hours here. Three minutes and twenty-one seconds. Yep. Speedy, that's me.

The weather reports have been yelling menacing threats of a cold weekend for days, so when I saw an event on coolrunning.com called Wind up the Westin, a 26-story stair climb down in Providence, RI it seemed like a good way to get out of the weather, and also "work on hills". Running UP is always a problem for me: train your weakness, right?
So I got up and drove an hour down to Providence. I had absolutely no idea what I was getting into, and when I walked into the five-star Westin hotel with its $9.00 parking and giant Christmas tree in the huge marble lobby I thought I'd gone to the wrong place and almost walked out. But then I saw people sitting at a long table with little envelopes and safety pins and I figured I was in the right place. I walked up to the table, which was decorated on every available surface with American Lung Association logos.
"Name?" said a woman in her 60s with an accent that could have been from Maine or southern England.
"Claire. I'm not registered yet." Then a thought occurred to me, what if there was no race day registration? "Can I still register?"
"Sure!" she gave me 2 sheets of paper. "Just fill these out honey, and it's a minimum $35.00 donation." Gulp. I was holding $40 in my hand, and really hoping that this would cover parking as well. I started filling out the form:
Name: Claire Badass Last name: Oh crap, I always do that. Well leave it blank, then
Team: Me!
Funds raised:
"Ummm, what do I put under Funds Raised?" I asked.
"Oh, they were going to make the minimum donation $65, but then they didn't say it on the web site, so they decided to lower it. So you only have to pay $35."
"Ummm, okay, so do I put $35 there?" I asked.
"No, leave it blank." Ummmm, oh kaaaay.
I want to take the challenge and do it twice _Yes _No
"Can I do it twice?!" I asked the volunteer lady excitedly in my best ohpleaseohpleaseohplease voice.
"No you can't," she said unequivocally. Then she looked at the sheet I was filling out. "OH! You don't have to fill out THAT one!" she said, and snatched it away from me. I filled out the entry form and she pushed the waiver over to me. "And now you need to sign the waiver. You can throw up, but nothing else." I signed it and went off to look like I knew what I was doing for the hour or so until my start time.

And then I saw her: the reason I will be doing more races in the Providence area this coming year. I fell in love instantly. And, as I do when I fall in love at first sight, I started wishing I could disappear and gawking when I thought she wasn't looking. Go over and talk to her, silly, I told myself. NO! I can't do that! I gasped, and began to blush. Aw, come on, she's by herself. It won't be weird if you talk to her, people do it all the time at things like this, I taunted myself. Noooooo, she looks like she knows what she's doing. She's probably one of those people who doesn't like to talk to anyone at races. What if she doesn't even say anything and just turns away? Then there'll be nowhere to hide. And it went on like this for awhile as I probably gaped at her the whole time. Then a group of people from a third-rate college cross country team went up to Her and asked Her to take their picture. Oh my god! They're talking to her! I gasped to myself. She smiled as she focused the camera and I fell even more in love. Come ooooooon, this is how you meet people! the brave me encouraged, and I went to stand near her. I kind of stood a couple of feet away and looked really interested in the ceiling for a minute or two before I got up the nerve to say something. "You look like you actually did some specific training for this," I said and immediately wanted the earth to swallow me.
"Nah. I mean, I run and stuff, but nothing like this." She had a Boston accent. Normally I don't like that, but it was cute on her.
"It just seemed like you had your game face on," I managed to blurt out, somewhat coolly I hope. Then I noticed her wedding ring, damn. Definitely gay, but probably a resident of Massachusetts. Oh well, people get divorced all the time. She talked about her pre-race routine for a few minutes. Pretty soon, though, I had convinced myself that nothing I could say could possibly be cool and couldn't make myself say anything else. Being silent because you're afraid of saying something stupid in front of someone you like isn't a great way to kill a conversation though, and after a long, awkward pause I darted for the bathroom to die of embarrassment. I'm definitely coming back to Rhode Island every chance I get!

Despite there being fewer than 50 participants, the usual suspects were still there:

• fresh-out-of-college speed demon with his girlfriend there playing the faithful sidekick
  
• the wiry, middle-aged compulsive jogger in a running singlet
  
• the gaggle of chicks with the boob jobs and ass tight pants wearing matching bandanas
• the college-aged recreational runner who hasn't quite figured out that running fashion is not exactly the same as what girls are wearing on the University of Rhode Island elliptical machines (this one, despite weighing only about 110 lb, had her stretch pants jammed all the way in to her whole butt crack leaving nothing but her tan lines up to the imagination)
• someone's kid wearing soccer shorts and the race t-shirt
  
• and the aging, overweight soccer mom crammed into an outfit that's way too small for her. She wore a getup that one would think was from an early '80s Jane Fonda video complete with headband, only upon closer inspection you notice that these are fabrics that weren't invented until the late 90s. Where do these women shop, really? If this woman had an ounce of muscle on her body, she hid it well, and yet there she was, all decked out with that look, like she was part of the "in" crowed. I am in shape, this is my scene, her body language said, while her body screamed the opposite..

Despite being small and indoors, it looked just like a running event.

I thought that this was a running thing. Apparently not. Apparently stair climbing is a sport in and of itself, or that's what the MC told us anyway in the pre-race meeting. And a very intense sport at that. Not only was there a water stop on the 14th floor and another at the top, but they also had a trash barrel on every second floor just in case you got sick; not one, but two volun... no, OFFICIALS on every floor in case there was a problem, and two doctors on duty. He explained the etiquette and jargon of stair climbing to us (to pass, say "inside" and the slower person will step to the outside of the stairwell), and reminded us to pace ourselves. Time would be kept by setting us off one at a time on the minute, #1 at 10:01, #2 at 10:02 and so on, and our finishing time would be recorded at the top.

I was number 35, She was number 6. I figured that I probably wouldn't see much of Her after the event started, since I'd probably leave before she came down, and then she'd be gone by the time I got back. The only statistics I knew about stair climbing was that it took the fire fighters an hour and a half to get to the 106th floor of the World Trade Center. Divide by 4 and take away a bit because we're not carrying gear, and I figured on a 10 minute finish, 8 for the winners. But then, right before #6 left numbers 1 and 3 (the MC) were already back in the lobby! As people starting coming out of the elevators seemingly right after they'd left I leaned over to the guy next to me, "I drove an hour to run for 3 minutes?!"

When it was Gina Fondette's turn I saw her posing for a picture right at the "starting line" (part of the pattern on the rug) during her 1:00 wait. The love of my life was taking the picture, I was twitterpated watching how supportive she was being to Gina Fondette. "Way to go! You can do it! This is YOURs!" she cheered. I melted. See, I'm not a nice person, so I'm really attracted to nice people. When it was my turn, all I could think about was whether I had an underwear line on my butt, which was now facing the woman of my dreams. The lady responsible for setting people off tapped my shoulder and whispered my count-down, "5...4...3...2...1...go!" and I bolted out of there as fast as I could to get my fashion emergency out of Princess Charming's line of vision.

By the third floor my legs were starting to burn. By the 5th floor I was gasping for air and was walking the pivot steps on the landing. On the 6th floor the volunteer said, "but you're not even breathing hard!" I was panting. By the 10th floor my legs felt heavy, but I'd found a rhythm. Pat, pat, pat on my toes up 8 steps and then take two big gulps of air as I turned around to run up the next flight. By the 15th floor my lungs were burning. On the 18th floor I caught up with the woman in front of me as well as an elderly woman in jeans, a t-shirt, and a fanny pack. The elderly woman was walking slowly and wheezing and gasping for air. On the 19th floor the volunteers were chanting (* means clap) "* * *** **** Nineteen! * * *** **** Nineteen and a Half!" (to the tune of * * *** **** Dog Show!). At the 20th floor the guy behind me caught me. And then, just as I was beginning to wonder if I was going to have to walk, there was the last flight of stairs with a piece of red tape on the lip of the top step to mark the finish line. 3 minutes and 21 seconds after it started, my day's workout was over.


I was gasping for air, as was everybody else at the top: the lady in front of me, the guy behind me (who had switched places relative to me by the last flight of stairs), and Gina Fondette. We all rode down in the elevator together commenting on how our lungs were burning. "Yeah, I had bronchitis last week and I was laid up in bed last Monday, but I came and finished anyway," said Gina Fondette. "It really says a lot that I was able to finish!" What exactly does it say? I wondered, but kept my mouth shut.

Back in the lobby my girlfriend was still there, eating a yogurt. I didn't quite catch her eye on the way to the food table, so I slowed my pace and blatantly stared at a spot about 2 feet from her shoulder to get her attention. "Hey, how'd you do?" she asked. Ummmm, I have no idea how I did. What's good in a 26-floor stair climb?
"Well, I got there," I said and coughed.

While I was picking through the food table Gina Fondette, who was standing next to the wall a few feet away started coughing uncontrollably. Hoping that my future wife would notice I asked her, "Are you alright? Can I get you some..." I looked at the water bottle she was holding in her hand, "...tea?" I finished meekly. Gina Fondette proceded to tell me once again that she'd been sick all week and wasn't it amazing that she finished at all. "I had to take quite a long break at that rest stop on the 14th floor, but I made it," she said, arrogantly. I still didn't know what I was supposed to be impressed about, but I acted impressed and said, "I haven't even been sick and I'm coughing. I think there was something about the air up there." This seemed to satisfy her, and I inched away before she could keep telling me about her cough.

I'd left my things behind the volunteers' table and as I was walking back up to get them the woman from Maine or Southern England and another one who had been very nice to me when I was signing up pointed at me and cheered, "There she is!" I felt special until I turned around and saw that it was the elderly woman with the fanny pack and asthma who had finally arrived at the top and then been allowed to WALK back down since she was the last one to get there anyway.
"I did it!" she said. She had a typical cute old lady voice. "I heard that there's another man here and he's in his 70s. I'm 75. I WANT TO BE THE OLDEST!" she said like a petulant child. They assured her that she was, in fact, the oldest and the volunteers gathered around her to congratulate her. "Oh, were you the one up there at the rest stop on the 14th floor? Where I took my shirt off?" she asked a sixteen-year-old thuggish looking boy who was grinning at her.
"Yes I was, you must have been very hot!" I looked on in horror, trying not to imagine this raisin of a woman topless until I realized that she was wearing a tank top and had probably been wearing a long-sleeved shirt over that.

Right before I was about to go out the door, the MC (who I noticed was wearing bike shorts; what kind of sport is stair climbing if it doesn't even have its own kind of shorts?!) came out with the time sheet. Everyone crowded around including my girlfriend. An older man, who must have been the 70-year-old runner-up for the Old Fogy Award asked my girlfriend, "Can you see it? Was I the very last one?" She read him his time patiently. I pretended I couldn't find my time just to stand near her and watch her help this man a little more. I looked at her number to find out her name, Christine. "Was I the last one though?" the man whined.
"Yep, ummmmm, wait," she said, scanning the results. "No, no I don't... wait... um..." in the end he wasn't, and he didn't look so worried anymore. To be honest, the man didn't look so 70 either, he looked more like 50.

I didn't get her number or anything, but I did get a goodbye. I was coughing for the rest of the day from the stale, dry air in the stairs, but that's okay, I'm in love.