Manmade top of Denver

Tallest building in a 11-state region

 The 55-degree start to March did not materialize as I drove into Denver. Homeless guys shouted “motherfucker this” and “motherfucker that” as I walked by.

Outside Republic Plaza, where the 16th Street Mall drew tourists, pedestrians and shouting vagrants, I just stared up and hoped for the best. Five climbs in, I knew the drill. Raise at least $100, climb some stairs and try not to think about how close the top was. At the moment, it couldn't have seemed further away.

This year’s climb would be harder than any previous year. In November 2018, the Nashville climb moved to the new 505 building, with about 850 stairs. The Republic Plaza climb totaled 1,098 stairs (not the Hancock Climb in Chicago, but another 250 from the 505). Republic Tower stands 717 feet tall, while the 505 tops out at 525 – the tallest building among the fourth where I completed the Nashville Climb.

What worried me more was the starting elevation – Nashville runs about 600 feet above sea level. As for Denver …. You know Denver’s height. Starting at that elevation might not work well for those who moved here in their 40s less than a year earlier. I might live at 6,035 feet above sea level, but I spent most of my life at 1,000 feet or less.

Still, I like the event since it’s so different from a 5K or bike tour. There's usually a good incentive for people to climb. The Denver event offered a rare chance to look out on Denver and the Rockies from the tallest building in the U.S. Mountain West (building nerd fact – Calgary and Edmonton each have two taller buildings).

Unlike past climbs, I paced before my start time. I felt the stress. I had done climbs on minimal training, but this one started so much higher. The last thing I wanted was someone calling paramedics 30 floors up because my stair machine training proved woefully inefficient. Three floors in, my heart and lungs were in race mode.

Not sure who planned water stations at 10, 17 and 35 – that last one felt too distant from the 56th floor. Yet I appreciated them all. At the 10th I didn’t hesitate at the water station and a chance for the break. I did the same at 17 and 35. During no previous climb had I taken so many breaks. I hit a landing, and I had to stop. The higher I got, the more I needed to let my breath return to a normal rate.

At floor 28, I cringed – halfway there, and it felt like I had not trained at all. A realization came over me. Stair machines do not prepare you for actual stairs. But aside from the Manitou Incline and its 2,800 steps or the mini-incline of 200 steps at Castle Rock’s Philip Miller Park, there were few places near the Springs to train. So the stair machine provided the best alternative, even if the training was not quite fitting.

Catching my breath

A couple of ladies and I fell into a pattern of passing each other, and gradually moving higher inspired us. I started counting down after the last water station rather than contemplating the floors I still had to conquer. The ladies did the same.

At floor 53, suddenly a man with a camera stood in the corner of the stairwell. I let some people pass and they looked at me awkwardly. Counting floors had not been entirely accurate, since a crowd of people cheered in the next room. I made it to the top. Like other buildings, Republic Plaza has no public observatory.

The celebration for finishers came in a two-story conference room. Everyone had their chance at the windows, with amazing views of the Rocky Mountains and parts of the Denver skyline. In the actual conference room off the finishing area, I met the ladies from the stairwell and we traded high fives. I had someone take my picture, took a few shots from the windows then looked for the elevators.

In a few minutes, the top of the Denver skyline became like any other peak – a place where you enduring a grueling hike to receive a few minutes of solitude before the inevitable descent. The express elevator in the Republic Tower just made the descent way faster.

I never bothered to check my time - okay, a week later I found out it took 21:02, about eight minutes longer than the 2018 Nashville climb. That was expected.

Last time in Nashville, we had a team and a 600 foot elevation start. This time it was 5,280 and me alone. I could have used those guys, but I committed to do this climb myself, so I did. Just don’t ask me about any negatives. The struggles in the stairwell faded to euphoria at the top of the tallest building in Colorado or any state it touched.

View from the top, looking west