Published: June 29, 2008 12:00AM

The Hayward Field announcer at Saturday’s U.S. Olympic Track & Field Trials had just announced that the temperature was above 90 degrees. As I started up the grandstands, I touched a metal handrail that might as well have been a curling iron. But I needed to ask a question of the guy at the top of Bleacher World’s answer to a sun-scorched Mount Everest.

Why? Why climb?

Why, on what was thus far a decidedly ho-hum afternoon of qualifying heats, was he here, standing atop a narrow fin of temporary bleachers that, by the track’s southeast turn, jut out over 15th Avenue with the pitch of a ski jump.