<p>The fastest man will reach the top in about 10 minutes, followed by a rumbling herd trying to ignore stinging quads.<br /><br />Last Tuesday was the 34th Empire State Building Run-Up, a vertical quarter-mile. The race, among the first on stairs, began as a lark in 1978. By 2010, there were more than 160 staircase races in the world — on 5 continents and in 34 states.<br /><br />The longest is in Radebeul, Germany, a 39,700-step, 100-lap slog designed to approximate an ascent of Mount Everest from sea level to the summit.<br /><br />The longest single-staircase race is the Niesen Treppenlauf, in Switzerland, a scenic thigh-screamer comprising 11,674 steps adjacent to a funicular with spectacular Alpine views.<br /><br />In the United States, races tend to be indoor events in which runners compete in isolation (there is no space for cheering fans) and suffocating conditions (many staircases are closed for most of the year and collect dust).<br /><br />Chicago hosts the three longest nonstop run-up races in the United States, and Terry Purcell, 40, has won them all multiple times.<br /><br />“Tell people you ran a marathon and they say, ‘Oh, OK’,” said Purcell, an eight-time champion of Chicago’s Hustle Up the Hancock. “If I say I ran up the Hancock, people are gobsmacked.”<br /><br />Melissa Moon, 41, a schoolteacher from New Zealand who won the Empire State Building Run-Up last year on her first try, said, “I’ve done marathons, track, mountain running, half marathons and I’ve got to say this is the hardest thing mentally and physically when you’re racing all out.”<br /><br />Tower running, as the indoor variety of the sport is known, has become so popular that two European organisations recently began ranking the racers.<br /><br />Thomas Dold, 26, is No 1 on both charts. Over the last four years, Dold, a German business consultant, has won 27 sprints up stairs in hotels, television towers and office buildings, including the Taipei 101, an unrelenting 2,046-step dash up the second-tallest building in the world that he has won twice. On Tuesday, he will try for a record-breaking sixth Empire State Building title.<br />Before Dold became a skyscraper celebrity, he broke records for running backward. His 1-kilometre (0.6-mile) time of 3 minutes 36.07 seconds is in Guinness World Records.<br /><br />Staircase racing draws a variety of athletes, including squash players and ultramarathoners, but the consensus is that competitive mountain runners do best.<br /><br />One of them, Paul Crake of Australia, was 5-0 in the Empire State Building race, four times running under 10 minutes, including the course record (9:33) he set in 2003. (Dold, by comparison, has not broken 10 minutes.) Crake’s career ended in November 2006 when a cycling accident left him paralysed from the sternum down. “Stair running is incredibly psychological,” Crake said by phone from Italy. “I don’t care how strong you are in the stairs, there comes a point when it’s a battle to keep running. It becomes almost impossible.”<br /><br />Purcell, the 1998 Empire State Building champion, says that when the adrenaline rush is over, the pain sets in.<br /><br />Advantage<br /><br />“Most guys don’t study technique anymore, which is fantastic for me,” said Purcell, an Australian who lives in Illinois. “They may be fitter and have more time to train, but they waste so much energy.<br /><br />“I see people wasting it on the turns by taking too many steps. I see people not using the railings well to save your legs. Also, the building messes with your head.”<br />As do cutthroat competitors. “The way to kick them in the gut is to surge,” Purcell said. “But who does that? A guy who’s trained to do it for the last six months.”<br />But where?<br />Top runners shun the Stairmaster for its unrealistic stride. Elliptical machines do not translate, either. Nothing simulates the demands of a staircase like a staircase; the taller the better.<br />Jesse Berg, the top American man in the 2010 World Cup standings, works as a fitness instructor in Chicago. One of his clients had a condominium in the Hancock building.<br />“He said, ‘We can do some floors in the janitors’ stairwell, but we can’t go all the way down,’ ” Berg said.<br />Left alone, Berg was tempted.<br />“I almost went down to the bottom,” he said. “The next week, I did it again, and security was waiting for me. I didn’t go to jail, but I was escorted out.”<br />Access is not a problem for Dold; the commute is. He travels three hours to Frankfurt twice a week to run up the 56-story Main Tower. “It’s not as high as the Empire State Building,” he acknowledged, “but if you train for a marathon, you don’t run 40K on the weekend.”<br />Moon will usually jog five minutes from her home to the Majestic Centre in Wellington, New Zealand.<br />Last year, when she told security guards she was trying to become the first Kiwi to win the Empire State Building race, Moon said: “They bent over backward. ‘What do you need? We’ll give you a swipe card.’ They put supportive signs in the stairwell.”<br />Knowledge of the course is crucial. Every stairwell is unique and can turn left or right.<br />“Your body can get crooked and tight on one side if you always train on stairs that go in the same direction,” Berg said.<br />Not all races are completely vertical, either. The Empire State Building features long flat stretches between flights, unlike the Taipei 101 in Taiwan, which offers no breaks. Taipei is so consistent, Dold said, that you can see the 91st floor from the bottom.<br />Some organisers, like the CN Tower’s in Toronto, allow fields of 5,000 runners or more. In this year’s Empire State Building race, about 450 runners will depart in seven waves. About 300 were accepted by the race organiser, the New York Road Runners, from among 1,200 applicants. The others gained entry through fund-raising.<br />To cope with crowds, the only rule is to pass on the outside, but passing takes effort.<br />Strategy is highly individualised, too. Most use the railings as a hoist. And the best racers take the steps two at a time.<br />“If you take one step, I guarantee you won’t win,” Dold said, “because there will be another guy who takes two.”<br />Pacing is also key. A 2009 study in the Scandinavian Journal of Medicine and Science in Sports found the “best skyscraper runners maintain a constant vertical speed and heart rate throughout the race.”<br />Should Dold win, his only reward will be satisfaction. There is no prize money. But he can always aim higher. Dold’s fantasy is to dash up the world’s tallest tower, the Burj Khalifa in the United Arab Emirates. A competitive race there has yet to be organised, but Dold said, “If the sheiks give me an e-mail with an invite, I’ll go.” <br />International Herald Tribune</p>
<p>The fastest man will reach the top in about 10 minutes, followed by a rumbling herd trying to ignore stinging quads.<br /><br />Last Tuesday was the 34th Empire State Building Run-Up, a vertical quarter-mile. The race, among the first on stairs, began as a lark in 1978. By 2010, there were more than 160 staircase races in the world — on 5 continents and in 34 states.<br /><br />The longest is in Radebeul, Germany, a 39,700-step, 100-lap slog designed to approximate an ascent of Mount Everest from sea level to the summit.<br /><br />The longest single-staircase race is the Niesen Treppenlauf, in Switzerland, a scenic thigh-screamer comprising 11,674 steps adjacent to a funicular with spectacular Alpine views.<br /><br />In the United States, races tend to be indoor events in which runners compete in isolation (there is no space for cheering fans) and suffocating conditions (many staircases are closed for most of the year and collect dust).<br /><br />Chicago hosts the three longest nonstop run-up races in the United States, and Terry Purcell, 40, has won them all multiple times.<br /><br />“Tell people you ran a marathon and they say, ‘Oh, OK’,” said Purcell, an eight-time champion of Chicago’s Hustle Up the Hancock. “If I say I ran up the Hancock, people are gobsmacked.”<br /><br />Melissa Moon, 41, a schoolteacher from New Zealand who won the Empire State Building Run-Up last year on her first try, said, “I’ve done marathons, track, mountain running, half marathons and I’ve got to say this is the hardest thing mentally and physically when you’re racing all out.”<br /><br />Tower running, as the indoor variety of the sport is known, has become so popular that two European organisations recently began ranking the racers.<br /><br />Thomas Dold, 26, is No 1 on both charts. Over the last four years, Dold, a German business consultant, has won 27 sprints up stairs in hotels, television towers and office buildings, including the Taipei 101, an unrelenting 2,046-step dash up the second-tallest building in the world that he has won twice. On Tuesday, he will try for a record-breaking sixth Empire State Building title.<br />Before Dold became a skyscraper celebrity, he broke records for running backward. His 1-kilometre (0.6-mile) time of 3 minutes 36.07 seconds is in Guinness World Records.<br /><br />Staircase racing draws a variety of athletes, including squash players and ultramarathoners, but the consensus is that competitive mountain runners do best.<br /><br />One of them, Paul Crake of Australia, was 5-0 in the Empire State Building race, four times running under 10 minutes, including the course record (9:33) he set in 2003. (Dold, by comparison, has not broken 10 minutes.) Crake’s career ended in November 2006 when a cycling accident left him paralysed from the sternum down. “Stair running is incredibly psychological,” Crake said by phone from Italy. “I don’t care how strong you are in the stairs, there comes a point when it’s a battle to keep running. It becomes almost impossible.”<br /><br />Purcell, the 1998 Empire State Building champion, says that when the adrenaline rush is over, the pain sets in.<br /><br />Advantage<br /><br />“Most guys don’t study technique anymore, which is fantastic for me,” said Purcell, an Australian who lives in Illinois. “They may be fitter and have more time to train, but they waste so much energy.<br /><br />“I see people wasting it on the turns by taking too many steps. I see people not using the railings well to save your legs. Also, the building messes with your head.”<br />As do cutthroat competitors. “The way to kick them in the gut is to surge,” Purcell said. “But who does that? A guy who’s trained to do it for the last six months.”<br />But where?<br />Top runners shun the Stairmaster for its unrealistic stride. Elliptical machines do not translate, either. Nothing simulates the demands of a staircase like a staircase; the taller the better.<br />Jesse Berg, the top American man in the 2010 World Cup standings, works as a fitness instructor in Chicago. One of his clients had a condominium in the Hancock building.<br />“He said, ‘We can do some floors in the janitors’ stairwell, but we can’t go all the way down,’ ” Berg said.<br />Left alone, Berg was tempted.<br />“I almost went down to the bottom,” he said. “The next week, I did it again, and security was waiting for me. I didn’t go to jail, but I was escorted out.”<br />Access is not a problem for Dold; the commute is. He travels three hours to Frankfurt twice a week to run up the 56-story Main Tower. “It’s not as high as the Empire State Building,” he acknowledged, “but if you train for a marathon, you don’t run 40K on the weekend.”<br />Moon will usually jog five minutes from her home to the Majestic Centre in Wellington, New Zealand.<br />Last year, when she told security guards she was trying to become the first Kiwi to win the Empire State Building race, Moon said: “They bent over backward. ‘What do you need? We’ll give you a swipe card.’ They put supportive signs in the stairwell.”<br />Knowledge of the course is crucial. Every stairwell is unique and can turn left or right.<br />“Your body can get crooked and tight on one side if you always train on stairs that go in the same direction,” Berg said.<br />Not all races are completely vertical, either. The Empire State Building features long flat stretches between flights, unlike the Taipei 101 in Taiwan, which offers no breaks. Taipei is so consistent, Dold said, that you can see the 91st floor from the bottom.<br />Some organisers, like the CN Tower’s in Toronto, allow fields of 5,000 runners or more. In this year’s Empire State Building race, about 450 runners will depart in seven waves. About 300 were accepted by the race organiser, the New York Road Runners, from among 1,200 applicants. The others gained entry through fund-raising.<br />To cope with crowds, the only rule is to pass on the outside, but passing takes effort.<br />Strategy is highly individualised, too. Most use the railings as a hoist. And the best racers take the steps two at a time.<br />“If you take one step, I guarantee you won’t win,” Dold said, “because there will be another guy who takes two.”<br />Pacing is also key. A 2009 study in the Scandinavian Journal of Medicine and Science in Sports found the “best skyscraper runners maintain a constant vertical speed and heart rate throughout the race.”<br />Should Dold win, his only reward will be satisfaction. There is no prize money. But he can always aim higher. Dold’s fantasy is to dash up the world’s tallest tower, the Burj Khalifa in the United Arab Emirates. A competitive race there has yet to be organised, but Dold said, “If the sheiks give me an e-mail with an invite, I’ll go.” <br />International Herald Tribune</p>
