Hello there Dogbait fans. Muppet’s Mum here again, taking over the blog to report back on my Eureka Towers climb. I would have posted the results sooner except that Muppet and her Kindergarten friends, being good and sharing children, gave us Gastro this week so we’ve been out of action for a few days. Lucky it was this week and not last week, I say!

Last Sunday was a rather bleak, wet Melbourne day (some would say typical Melbourne weather except for the fact that any type of rainfall these days is highly unusual, as you would no doubt be aware from many of Dogbait’s previous posts on this subject!).  The top of the Eureka Towers was shrouded in CLOUDS. My goodness, we couldn’t even see where we were going to end up (that might have been a good thing).

Attempting the climb were myself, my climbing partner Roz and her sister Sonya, who had flown in from New York the day before with her 7 month old daughter.  Roz and I decided to dress for the event – she as a bumble bee (the Eureka Towers is decorated with 24 carat gold bumble bees) and me as, well nothing in particular, just lots of colour and sequins, and arrows on my head, just in case I forgot which way to go.

All the hard work and training we put in paid off, with us completing the climb – 1958 stairs, 89 floors and 300m vertical elevation – in 20mins 30sec. Not bad for a first effort, and considering that we stopped along the way to take photos! And because I raised more than $500 for the event’s charity partners – Interplast and White Lion – I had the privilege of climbing yet more stairs – to the ROOF – for an official photograph. I now feature on their website! Here are some of the photos from an awesome day:

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Hello there readers, Muppet’s Mum here. Sorry to hijack the blog but DB did give me author rights (I’m just waiting for the right moment to post photos of him with Muppet’s Barbie dolls) so I thought I’d come on over and have a bit of a brag. And I do know many of you from back in the days of Muppet’s blog so I thought you might be interested (apologies to those who don’t know us!).

You see back in September a friend of mine asked me if I’d like to join her on the Eureka Climb. It sounded interesting so I said yes and went ahead and registered for the event. I didn’t take a lot of notice at the time of registration as I was focusing on getting on the same start time as my friend. So once I had that locked away and had paid my registration fee, I read the details.

“The Eureka Climb is one of the highest ‘vertical’ races in the southern hemisphere with more stairs than the famous Empire State Building. Climb your way through 1958 stairs, 89 levels and 300m of vertical elevation.”

What the?!?

So, the challenge was on. How to turn my legs of jelly into legs of steel in 10 weeks? Fortunately I was already at an average fitness level, running occasionally but with no real regularity or goal in mind. So my friend and I hit the stairs. One of our local beaches (13th Beach – DB has posted many photos) is right on the cliff face and there are many access points with lots of stairs – our first point of training – 104 steps. We started out running and walking these steps 6 times, and gradually increased over a few weeks to 20 times. That’s 2,080 steps up and 2,080 steps down! A couple of times every week!

Here’s Muppet posing on said staircase one morning she came down to cheer me on.

We then found another good set of stairs at Jan Juc beach so gave those a try as well – 134 steps!

Not such a great photo (taken from my crappy mobile phone) but you get the idea!

In between stair climbing sessions we have also been running lots of hills and even managed the You Yangs twice in the same morning (DB & MP trained here with Tanya). Throw in a few longer runs on the flat, some swimming and bike riding here and there and a few sessions on the “Rock Climber” I hired

and BINGO – LEGS.OF.STEEL.

The event is this Sunday and I’m only slightly freaking out. I know I am physically ready but now comes the mental challenge of running these stairs in such a small, enclosed space when I can be very claustrophobic!!! I might take a brown paper bag with me just in case I start to hyperventilate! I am extremely grateful that the weather forecast for Sunday is only 23º. I don’t think I could do it if we were going to have one of our extreme heat days. There are 8 two way radios located throughout the stairwells in case of emergency so I guess I’ll be okay.

If DB doesn’t cancel my author access, I’ll report back next week!