Starting up
OK, folks, it looks we have a start time for our grand stairclimbing adventure:
10:00am. Perfect! Not so early that it's a traumatic wake-up time (for some of us) and not so late that the stairwell will feel like, well, a stinky, soggy well.
You can check the Big Climb start times page
here to verify that you're listed with the CrossFit Eastside team (if you registered before the 17th, you should be listed now; if you registered later, you can check for updates every few days).
3rd Annual Big Climb
It’s time to dust off your climbing shoes! Stair climbing shoes that is. CrossFit Eastside is putting together our third annual Big Climb for Leukemia team and we need your support. If you haven’t been a part of the team in the past, the Big Climb is a race up the Columbia Tower stairs; for time of course. The Big Climb will take place Sunday, March 16 at the Columbia Center in downtown Seattle. The 69-flight course includes 1,311 steps, 19 steps per flight and 788 feet of vertical elevation.
I would like to see everyone from the gym participating in the event, but if you cannot make it please consider making a
donation for the team. Last year we collected over $900 to help fight blood cancer. This year our goal is to raise at least $2,000.
To register for the team go to
http://www.active.com/donate/2008bigclimb/CFES and click on “register for the event.” Make sure when you register that you select CrossFit Eastside as your team. You will be taken through a registration process that includes paying a $35 fee.
Donations can be made online by following the above link or you can write a check made payable to The Leukemia & Lymphoma Society and drop it off at the gym. Remember, your donations are tax deductible.
As some of you may know, my brother was recently diagnosed with Hodgkin’s Lymphoma and is undergoing treatment. I’m sure some of you also have family or friends who have been affected by blood cancers. My hope is that through our efforts at The Big Climb we can make a difference in the lives of cancer patients.
Check out
http://www.bigclimb.org/ for more information.
Your Team Captain,
Aaron
Stairmastery
Tips for getting upward bound:
• Take two or more stairs at once, and use your arms. Handrails are your friends.
• Push off your full foot. Stepping or running from the balls of your feet will just make your calves and quads hate you. (Perhaps you’ve heard us say “Heels down!” once or twice before?)
• Find a rhythm, sync your breathing up with it, and just crank through the steps. Nice and consistent. It’s like doing “Karen” (150 wall-ball shots for time): breathe, go, breathe, go, breathe, go…. Become a human stairclimbing machine.
Paul Peterson, Woodinville firefighter and awesome CrossFitter, gave us this advice before past year’s event:
“As a long time competitor in the Firefighter challenge, I have a couple of tips for you. The first is do not go out too fast. Pick up the pace later in the game if you still have it and remember to pull with the arms, as the stairwells are very narrow. If you have the leg length, double stepping will definitely improve your time. Get your CrossFit attitude on and fly up that tower! Oh ya and most important remember to take in that great view at the top and don't let Duggins beat ya.”After completing the climb, we all totally agreed with his assessment.
Any other tips? Post them to comments. Please. We welcome all the help we can get.
Raising up some funds
OK, crew, the Big Climb is less than two weeks away, so it’s about time to step up (ha) our fundraising efforts. It’s not required that you solicit donations in order to participate, but the reason they bother to put this thing on in the first place is to raise money for leukemia research, so let’s see what we can do as a team. Here's some info to help get you started.
Where folks can donate
Your friends, family, coworkers, networking buddies, and casual acquantainces all can earmark their pledges specifically to support your effort. They do so by making a donation from your personal page. (You can find the URL for it by selecting your name from the drop-down menu at the top of this page:
http://www.active.com/donate/2008bigclimb/CFES.) Any donations specified for you also get rolled up into the team total.
Soliciting pledgesE-mail works great for asking for support from your friends and family, since you can send the link to the page where they can make an easy online donation (on credit card, even!). Mention that you’re doing this with a team of people from your favorite gym and give some background on the event.
The letter I’m drafting looks like this. Feel free to use/revise any parts of it for your own:
"Hi folks,
CrossFit Eastside has now been around long enough now to be having a second annual go at the Big Climb for Leukemia on Sunday, March 18. We have a team of folks committing to climb the stairwells of Washington state’s tallest skyscraper (that’s 69 flights of stairs, 1,311 total steps, and 788 feet of vertical elevation), all to raise funds to support the Leukemia & Lymphoma Society's mission of working toward a cure for leukemia, lymphoma, Hodgkin's disease, and myeloma.
Last year our team of eleven dedicated folks completed the challenge. We placed 11th overall (out of 85), and we raised over $1800 for blood cancer research. This year, the CFES community has expanded significantly, and our buddies at Rainier CrossFit, CrossFit Westside, and CrossFit Mt. Baker will be participating as well, so we expect to do collectively even better.
Toward that end, if you’d like to support the cause, any amount you can contribute helps. It’s easy to pledge online:
http://www.active.com/donate/2008bigclimb/Carrie
-or-
htthttp://www.active.com/donate/2008bigclimb/CFES.
Much appreciated. Results and photos will be posted to www.crossfiteastside.com after the event.
Thank you!"
Corporate matchingLots of companies—for example, Bill’s little software outfit up the hill that many of you spend too much time at—match employee donations to charitable causes such as this one. If you or your coworkers donate, you can typically double the amount of money that goes to the cause by submitting a matching request.
If you happen to work at Microsoft, here’s the process in more detail:
- Employee (you or your coworkers—those people whose kids’ various fundraisers you probably supported)) makes a $25+ pledge for the Big Climb at http://www.active.com/donate/2008bigclimb/CFES or your personal subpage.
- Employee reports donation (to 0001089 Leukemia & Lymphoma Society Inc Seattle, WA Human Services) at MS internal site http://give/default.aspx and chooses Match Now.
That’s basically it.
Fundraising tips from the Big Climb organizers are at
http://lls.org/all_page.adp?item_id=218688.
OK, folks, it looks we have a start time for our grand stairclimbing adventure: 10:00am. Perfect! Not so early that it's a traumatic wake-up time (for some of us) and not so late that the stairwell will feel like, well, a stinky, soggy well.
