Heartbreaker, Dreammaker, Love Taker....

We had a fairly big gang to walk the Heartbreaker walk on Saturday, Feb. 12. Lana had to bow out due to some bad shrimp. Dave had to bow out due to a broken furnace.

But at REI we met up: Iyaz and wife Elaine, Krista, Wendy, Will, Nancy, Carolyn, Tom, and Rachel. We quickly broke into 3 groups of varying speed in rain and drizzle. By starting at REI, this walk had a longer warm-up time before we hit the stairs.

How many stairs? Will and Iyaz counted - 1024 steps! Tom also counted, but being a macho guy he was subtracting the down stairs from the up stairs!

I was in the middle group with Krista and Nancy. I knew Krista and I would be slower on the stairs than Will would be, and he took off with Iyaz and Elaine and we didn't see them till the finish. We paused for breath on stairs that were over 2 flights long. This is a great cardio workout. It was also great to catch up with Nancy on her doings.

We were discussing our nicknames, ala "Holes." Will is going to come up with some snazzy way of getting suggestions for those without nicknames yet. Here are ones we are sorta agreed upon:
Will: Rocky (always getting rocks in his shoes)
Wendy: Blowout (shoelaces coming untied)
Nancy: Stitch (all those surgeries)
Krista: Camel (never needs a restroom)
Rachel: Princess (of course!)

The final up stairs were totally cruel. Bad enough that at 8K you see these 3 steep flights of concrete steps going up. But when you get to the top, another 5 flights of steps are revealed! You just want to turn around and go back down and head to the finish from there. Instead, it started raining again but we kept moving, up, over, down, and back.

We all made it back. Awaiting Carolyn-Rachel-Tom, we schmoozed with teammates Burt and Romana as well as CRVC prez Joe Kelly. Then we piled into cars and all went to Swagat's Indian buffet at 21st and Lovejoy. This was a new experience for Krista and, I believe, Tom. Might be a bit too spicy for Krista. Rachel discovered that Elaine knows her husband, it's a small world after all!

It was a great time to recover from the Heartbreaker.