The selection of the elite male and female runners for the 2019 La Verticale de la Tour Eiffel has been announced.
15 women and 25 men from around the world were picked by the organisers of the event, which is coming into its fifth year.
Since launching in 2015, the race, which takes place on Wednesday 13th March at the Eiffel Tower in Paris, has become the premier European tower running event.
Each of the four previous editions (2015-2018) have been won by Piotr Lobodzinski (POL) and Suzy Walsham (AUS), and they will both return to Paris in 2019 to try and secure a fifth straight win.
The 2019 UK stair racing season gets under way in February, and spaces at some of the key events are already beginning to fill up.
With big races happening in Manchester, Leicester and London there are opportunities to take part in a stair race in the north, midlands and south of the country.
Here are three of the best UK tower running events we think you should be looking to sign up for in the coming months.
1. The Christie Tower Run
Beetham Tower has 798 steps and is the 11th tallest tower in the UK.
What is it?
This challenging, charity stair climb event returns for a third year, giving runners the chance to climb 798 steps to the top of Beetham Tower, Manchester’s tallest building. Entry is £15, with participants asked to commit to raise £150 sponsorship.
Why should I do it?
Firstly, it’s an excellent cause and charity that deserves support. The Christie charity is one of the largest hospital charities in Europe. It exists to raise funds for all those extra special services that help patients to cope with the impact of cancer on their daily lives. Donations also contribute towards their cancer research programmes, capital building projects and the purchase of state of the art medical equipment.
Secondly, if you’re in the north of the country you’ll know that stair races are thin on the ground up there, even though we’ve seen more events popping up outside of London year-on-year. Now entering its third edition, this brilliant event is maintaining the presence of stair climbing in the north of England. For those north of the Midlands this is an easily accessible race to try. For stair climbers in the capital, it’s a welcome opportunity to escape London and climb one of the other tallest buildings in the UK.
It’s definitely not one to be missed.
When is it?
Sunday 24th February 2019 at Beetham Tower, 303 Deansgate, Manchester M3 4LQ.
A sprint event up the 351-step St George’s Tower in central Leicester.
Why should I do it?
It’s cheap. Just £17 entry with no fundraising commitment, or free entry if you can fundraise £50 or more for LOROS. With most UK races requiring you to raise sponsorship in excess of £100 on top of your entry fee, this friendly and very well-organised event is an absolute bargain.
The 351-step building is one of the the shortest courses in the UK, so is a great introductory climb for those who want to try out stair climbing but are maybe a bit daunted by the challenge of one of the bigger towers.
For more experienced climbers, it’s a rare opportunity to go all out in a sprint and throw off the shackles of pacing that is sometimes so hard to get right during climbs in taller buildings.
It’s seen some really close battles in the last couple of years, and 2019 promises to be just as competitive.
It will also make a great warm-up race for those doing Vertical Rush for Shelter in London on 14th March.
When is it?
Saturday 9th March 2019 at St George’s Tower, 1A St Georges Way, Leicester, LE1 1SH.
A challenging stair climb up the 877-step Broadgate Tower in the City of London.
Why should I do it?
It’s hard to get into one of the big London towers for a race without committing to fundraising a sizeable minimum amount of money for a charity. But this event is largely focused on tower running as a sporting challenge, meaning you can just pay to race without having to raise any money. Although the opportunity to run for a chosen charity will be available for those who want to do that.
It attracts a deep field of experienced stair runners, so if you’re up for a challenge you’ll have the chance to pit yourself against some of the best in the UK and Europe. But there’ll be plenty of newcomers at this welcoming event, too, making it an excellent choice if you’re keen to try a stair climb for the first time.
In addition to the traditional single-climb event, there will also be the option of doing a 1/4 Vertical Mile or a Full Vertical Mile, which involve multiple climbs up the building’s 877 steps.
Broadgate Tower is one of the big London towers and is a great venue to climb.
When is it?
Saturday 20th July 2019 at Broadgate Tower, 201 Bishopsgate, London EC2M 3AB.
Terry Purcell is a legend of the sport and when the Tower Running Hall of Fame is founded, he’ll be first in line to be inducted.
His outstanding contribution to the sport began in 1993 when he took part in his first race at Sydney’s Centrepoint Tower. Encouraged by friend, and fellow Australian, Geoff Case, who had won the Empire State Building Run-Up from 1991-1993, Purcell excelled from the very beginning.
Within two years he had destroyed Case’s record at the Sydney Tower by 24 seconds. In 1998 he won the ESBRU himself, and when he retired from competitive racing in 2011 he had won more elite races than any other climber before him. His record included five wins from five starts at Chicago’s AON Center (plus a long-standing course record that was only broken in February 2017) and nine wins from nine starts at the John Hancock Center (now 875 North Michigan Avenue).
Terry Purcell winning the ESBRU in 1998.
Purcell came out of retirement in 2017 to race once more at the Hancock Center, and has been active once again on the US stair climbing scene for the past couple of years. In that time he’s secured wins, podium places and top five finishes in a spread of highly competitive races to take the number one spot at the top of the USA tower running rankings.
This is a cool video showing Terry Purcell MkII on his way to winning the Vertical Mile event at the Reunion Tower in Dallas back in January 2018.
But it’s this next excellent video that we really want to bring to your attention. This interview is from around 2009, when Purcell had been racing and winning for 16 years. His knowledge and experience is invaluable and there are lots of useful insights here, ranging from how to pass rivals during a race to how he trains and his mental approach to stair climbing.
The Christie’s Tower Run returns to Manchester for its third edition on Sunday 24th February 2019 at the city’s 46-floor Beetham Tower.
Standing at 169m, and with 798 steps, Beetham Tower is the tallest UK building outside of London. It played host to competitive races in 2017 and 2018 and you can expect the 2019 edition to be another fantastic one.
This challenging, charity stair climb event returns for a third year, giving runners the chance to climb 798 steps to the top of Beetham Tower, Manchester’s tallest building.
Sign up before 1st December and entry is just £10 (after that it will be £15), with participants asked to commit to raise £150 sponsorship for the charity.
Why should I do it?
Firstly, it’s an excellent cause and charity that deserves support. The Christie charity is one of the largest hospital charities in Europe. It exists to raise funds for all those extra special services that help patients to cope with the impact of cancer on their daily lives. Donations also contribute towards their cancer research programmes, capital building projects and the purchase of state of the art medical equipment.
Secondly, if you’re in the north of the country you’ll know that stair races are thin on the ground up there. We’ve seen more events popping up outside of London year-on-year, and in 2017 the launch of this event heralded the welcome return of stair climbing to the north west of England. For those north of the Midlands this is a brilliant and easily accessible race to try. For stair climbers in the capital, it’s a welcome chance to escape London and climb one of the other tallest buildings in the UK.
Thirdly, it was a really popular and competitive event in 2017 and 2018, with climbers universally praising the organisation and atmosphere on the day. It’s definitely not one to be missed.
When is it?
Sunday 24th February 2019 at Beetham Tower, 303 Deansgate, Manchester M3 4LQ, with waves from 10am to 2pm.
Sarah Frost set a new women’s course record at the NSPCC Gherkin Challenge event in London last Sunday (28 October).
One of the most successful UK stair climbers on the circuit at the moment, Frost shattered the previous record by 30 seconds to set a highly impressive new time of 5.33, which was also enough to earn her third overall.
A relative newcomer to the sport, but already course record holder at London’s Broadgate Tower and Leadenhall Building, plus Portsmouth’s Emirates Spinnaker Tower, Frost was expected to take the win and break the course record, but it wasn’t an easy victory.
Only four seconds separated her from debutant Hannah Rhodes-Patterson, a competitive cyclist from the north-west of England. Former record holder, and last year’s winner, Sonja Shakespeare smashed her previous best by 13 seconds as she finished third in 5.50.
Sarah Frost (left, #049) in the stairwell ahead of her record-breaking run
David Harris wins NSPCC Gherkin Challenge 2018
Overall victory on the day went to David Harris, who took a massive 27 seconds off his second-place time last year and finished in 4.48. His win continues his long run of impressive UK performances and makes him one of the few people to have gone under five minutes at the iconic London building.
NSPCC Gherkin Challenge 2018 winner David Harris alongside Sonja Shakespeare
Focus in the UK now turns to the Broadgate Tower Run Up later this month on Saturday 24th November. That will serve as the London leg of the Vertical World Circuit 2018, where some of the world’s top stair climbers will be in attendance.
With entries from the inspirational amateur to the expert elite, we run through five of our favourite stair climbing websites.
Considering how long stair climbing has been around, it’s a bit surprising (and disappointing) that there aren’t more websites full of event news or training tips. But despite the dearth of sites, there are still some great ones out there worth visiting.
Read on to find out the sites we visit for expert stair climbing training tips and in-depth race reports.
5 – Keep It Up David
Since embracing an active lifestyle and healthy eating habits in 2010, David Garcia has managed to turn his life around and lose 160lbs (11 and-a-half stone/72.5kg).
Of course there have been several factors to his impressive transformation, but key among them has been his involvement in the stair running community.
He’s probably the closest thing to a celebrity there is in the tower running community – we certainly felt a little bit star struck when we spotted him in the holding area at the start line of La Verticale de la Tour Eiffel earlier this year. He’s featured on The Ellen Show!!
For the past eight years, David has documented his inspirational journey in a series of excellent blog posts. His first stair climb was in 2012 and he does an easy-to-read and interesting post-race write up of the stair races and running events he takes part in. We’ve been following his blog for five years now and always look forward to new posts.
The posts are always personal, so if you’re just looking for cold hard training tips his site may not be top of your list, but he offers some nice insights from the perspective of a regular climber leaving it all on the stairs at every race.
This is a new addition to the community of stair climbing websites. Well-presented and well-written, it’s the work of former journalist and keen stair climber Josh Jackett. It’s focused exclusively on the United States, so unless you live there, or you’re a general fan of the sport who likes to keep up to date with the international stair climbing scene, it might not have what you’re looking for.
Stair Life has race previews of most, if not all, of the upcoming races in the USA calendar. It has a page of stat sheets for lots of the major race venues in America, featuring course records, number of steps and lists of male and female winners from previous years. It even dabbled with a short-lived podcast, which we hope makes a comeback.
In a sport that lacks any serious, constant media attention at all, the efforts of sites like Stair Life don’t go unnoticed. We’re sure the race previews give competitors a little buzz of excitement as they prepare for their upcoming climbs. We’re excited to see how this site develops as the sport grows.
PJ Glassey is the founding father of the small corpus of stair climbing training literature worth reading. When we got into stair climbing seriously in 2013, PJ’s X Gym website was the only real source of dedicated knowledge on stair climb-specific training and race-day preparation. It was truly an invaluable resource for a sport where a lot of time can be wasted in trial and error trying to figure out how to race efficiently.
When races at most buildings come around just once a year, minimising errors in pacing and technique is essential so you can make the most of your annual chance. The expert advice on the X Gym site definitely compressed our painful learning phase and if you’re new to the sport it will likely do the same for you.
X Gym’s material is packed full of essential tips for how to approach your stair climb event, how to master landing turns, how to target your legs with tough workouts that will set them up to handle the demands of a long climb, plus lots more. They’ve even got a link to a site that provides a detailed breakdown of the step layout in major US buildings, so racers can pre-plan their strategy ahead of the event (whoever put that site together is another legend).
The fact that it’s almost nine years since he uploaded some of his training videos on to YouTube, and they’re still probably the best and most informative around, speaks to their quality and unfortunately to the unwillingness of the slow-moving tower running community to produce content. But fortunately that’s beginning to change, as you’ll see in the next entry in our list.
The trajectory of the popularity of tower running is an odd one, though. Five years ago Vice and Adidas did a three-part feature on the sport, with a focus on the scene in Seattle. It showcased Glassey and other well-known names including Kevin Crossman, Shaun Stephens-Whale and Kourtney Dexter as they prepared for and raced the Big Climb in Seattle’s Columbia Center.
The sport is definitely expanding, as demonstrated by growing participation globally and increased mentions – albeit small ones – in mainstream publications. But right now, despite this growth, the idea of Adidas, Vice or any other big brand/media channel doing anything with tower running seems like a dream. Glassey was at the forefront of the sport when it was at its zenith and the X Gym materials capture that.
The site’s stair running training materials haven’t been updated in a while and Glassey seems to have taken a step back from the sport, but his contribution to the sport is lasting.
Although PJ Glassey’s training tips are thorough and comprehensive, this site probably just edges it for us in terms of usefulness for competitive stair climbers.
The reason is because it draws from the combined experiences of three of the best stair climbers in the USA: Terry Purcell, Eric Leninger and John Osborn. With dozens of wins between them at some of the toughest events in the USA, what these three don’t know about stair climbing isn’t worth knowing. The result is a rich body of knowledge spread over just a few pages in easily digestible nuggets of stair climbing gold.
There are full sections on pacing and technique, plus one page mysteriously titled The Secret, which has eight expert tips designed to help you lop heaps of time off your stair race PBs. They are excellent.
The site isn’t regularly updated with fresh content, but it really has everything you need to begin training and racing in earnest.
This blog by American stair climbing star Alex Workman was always going to be number one, because it was the inspiration for Tower Running UK.
Back in the barren years of the early 2010s, it was the personal blog of Alex Workman (alongside X Gym) that was keeping stair climbers informed with race day tips and training advice.
As his athletic endeavours have expanded to include other disciplines such as rowing, Workman has been largely absent from the stair running scene in 2018, although he’s recently begun racing and blogging again this month. But among his six years of intermittent blog posts are some of the most informative pieces on stair climb training you will find anywhere.
Made up largely of race reviews, his blog is full of expert post-race analysis. Workman takes a scientific approach to stair climbing – he climbs with a metronome to help maintain his pace throughout the race – and each race he competes in undergoes a thorough examination detailing how he felt through each stage of the event.
He has a very readable style and a knack for telling a good story, so you find yourself really drawn into his experiences. We read over 30 posts in one sitting after discovering his blog in 2013.
But Workman’s lasting contribution is in two training blogs he wrote back in 2014. These two in-depth training posts, combined with the technique and pacing information on Team Stair Climb, are all you need to take your stair climbing to a whole new level.
Part two details his interval training workouts, which he says ‘focus on increasing anaerobic threshold and VO2 max, which I consider to be the #1 ingredients to stair climbing performance.’
Make those workouts part of your preparation for your next stair race and you are bound to see improvements on your times.
Piotr Lobodzinski and Suzy Walsham took the first victories in the 2018 Vertical World Circuit on Sunday at the Lotte World Tower International Sky Run in Seoul, Korea.
Just a week on from their respective World Championship wins in Taipei, the pair raced up 2,917 steps to the top of the world’s fifth tallest building to kick off the nine-race VWC series.
Lobodzinski extended his unbeaten run in 2018 by holding off the challenge from Australia’s Mark Bourne and Japanese star Riyoji Watanabe.
The Bull of Bielsk Podlaski reached the top of the 550+ metre tower in 15.53, with Bourne behind in 16.16. Watanabe finished in 17.19.
It was Lobodzinski’s 123rd stair climb event, and coincidentally and fittingly the race covered 123 floors.
For Walsham it was a more comfortable victory as she finished over a minute faster than her nearest rival en route to setting a new course record of 18.45, two seconds faster than the time she set at the tower’s inaugural race last year.
Korea’s Ji Eun Kim gave the locals something to cheer about as she took second in 19.49.
Alice McNamara from Australia came in third in 20.08. Having missed the World Championship last weekend due to illness, McNamara will surely be extremely happy with taking a hefty 12 seconds off her time from 2017. A great return to competition.
The Vertical World Circuit will return to London on Saturday 24th November with an event at Broadgate Tower in the heart of the City of London.
Returning for its third edition, the Broadgate Tower Run Up will see some of the very best tower runners in the world race up the building’s 35 floors and 877 steps.
The event takes over from Vertical Rush as the London stage of the multi-race series held at towers across the world. The Broadgate Tower Run Up will be valid for an extra 25% bonus points on the VWC final ranking, a competition that sees the world’s top stair climbers compete for the VWC Champion title and cash prizes.
The other eight races in the series will take place in towers in Korea, France, USA, Philippines, China, Japan and Hong Kong.
The London event is being organised by Total Motion Events.
‘Total Motion are honoured to be hosting the London leg of the prestigious Vertical World Circuit at The Broadgate Tower in November 2018. We look forward to welcoming the world’s top stair climbers to the UK where they will be competing for valuable points in the last 2018 VWC event before the grand final in Hong Kong,’ said Total Motion CEO, Matt Hudson.
Aside from the elite race, the Broadgate Tower Run Up will also have new family categories, with options for one adult plus one child, as well as two adults and two children.
We’ll also see the return of the ¼ Vertical Mile and full Vertical Mile races to the UK. Most stair climbing events consist of one climb to the top however Total Motion are offering the chance to climb Broadgate Tower three times to reach a quarter vertical mile, or 12 times to reach a full vertical mile.
Nobody else offers this in the UK, so if you’re really keen to push yourself out of your comfort zone, and one climb just won’t cut it, then this is definitely the event for you.
With the popularity of stair climbing rising year-on-year, demand is likely to be high for this high-profile event so if you’re considering it, it’s probably best to get your place booked up early.
*Update Oct, 2019 – this event has now finished
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The event began with a climb up the first 35 floors of Taipei 101. Walsham was first into the stairwell and powered up 824 steps in just 4.31. Behind her in the initial standings was the expected competition of Zuzana Krchova (4.53) and Valentina Belotti (5.01).
With Walsham very rarely beaten over longer distances, it seemed like she had the Championship wrapped up with that clear victory in the shorter race. Only a complete disaster in the following full-length race up 91 floors would have prevented her from securing her first world title.
There would be no disaster, though, and amazingly, with only around 90 minutes rest between races, Walsham managed to pull out a PB at Taipei 101 as she stormed up 2,046 steps in 13.01, securing her fourth win at the iconic building in Taiwan.
The absence of 2015 world champion Andrea Mayr and Japanese mountain running star Yuri Yoshizumi from the Championship meant the most significant challenges to Walsham were removed, but in this sort of form the Australian appeared unbeatable anyway.
‘[It’s a] big milestone for me today, it is my 100th stair race,’ said Walsham, ‘I’ve achieved a lot over the years, it’s been an incredible journey, and so i’m thrilled to be here for that 100th race’.
With 100 races in a 12-year stair climbing career, Walsham is a six-time Vertical World Circuit winner, seven-time Towerrunning World Tour winner, nine-time Empire State Building Run-Up winner and is now a worthy and unrivalled World Champion.
Her attention now turns to the Vertical World Series that begins at Lotte Tower in Seoul this coming Sunday. Walsham won there last year and will return there again to seek out another victory and kick off her attempt to retain her Vertical World Circuit title.
Piotr ‘Showtime’ Lobodzinski stormed to victory at Taipei 101 on Saturday to secure his second consecutive tower running world title.
In a dominant performance, the 32-year-old Polish star won both races in the two-part championship format to finish well clear of second-placed rival Christian Riedl.
The championship event began with a ‘sprint’ up the first 35 floors of Taipei 101. Although Lobodzinski was a clear pre-race favourite, it was in this shorter race that he was expected to face his toughest test. But in the end it wasn’t nearly as close as some had anticipated.
Setting off first at just before 7.30am local time, Lobodzinski powered up 824 steps in just 3.39. He was followed into the stairwell by known speedster Frank Carreno, who some had anticipated winning the sprint event.
However, the Colombian athlete, who won the Empire State Building Run Up 2018 back in February, was some way off the blistering pace set by Showtime. Carreno finished in 3.50, with Germany’s Riedl third in 3.55.
Less than 90 minutes later the athletes were back at the start line ready for the second race of the day. This time they would be going up 2,046 stairs to the 91st floor of Taipei 101.
With Lobodzinski undefeated in 2018, and rarely beaten in longer races, he was largely expected to take the win in the longer race. Pre-race speculation had considered the chances of Mark Bourne, one of the only men to have beaten Lobodzinski in a tall tower in recent years, presenting a challenge, but it wasn’t to be.
Lobodzinski reached the 91st floor in 11.11, with Riedl just behind in second (11.15) and Japan’s Riyoji Watanabe in third (11.48). Carreno was fourth in 11.49 and Bourne fifth, just a few hundredths of a second behind the Colombian.
The top six men at the tower running World Championship 2018: (l-r) Riyoji Watanabe, Christian Riedl, Piotr Lobodzinski, Frank Carreno, Mark Bourne, Gorge Heimann.
With maximum points from both races, Lobodzinski was crowned World Champion. A third-place and second-place finish across both races secured Christian Riedl second place overall, while Frank Carreno did enough in both races to take third place.
With his win in Taipei, Lobodzinski adds a second world title to the one he won in 2015 in Doha.
What next for the Polish superstar? The nine-event Vertical World Circuit (VWC) begins next week in Seoul at the Lotte Tower. Lobodzinski was beaten there last year by Mark Bourne, so will be expected to return to Korea to exact revenge and set himself up on the way to another VWC title. In this sort of form, who would bet against him?
David Harris says he will ‘enjoy every painful minute’ as he prepares for the World Championship race at Taipei 101 on Saturday.
Harris is in Taipei with fellow Team GB athlete Sonja Shakespeare, with the pair the only British representatives at the championship.
‘I did the Taipei race last year, so at least know what to expect,’ said Harris, who is hoping to beat his 2017 finishing time of 18 minutes.
‘I’m feeling pretty relaxed and fit. I’ve not done quite as much training as I’d hoped but have stayed injury free and feel in pretty good shape for the race.’
It’s been a solid start to 2018 for Harris. He kicked off the UK race season with a second-place finish at Broadgate Tower, followed quickly by a top-five placing at the competitive Beetham Tower Run in Manchester.
He then pulled off an historic achievement in March, winning two London races just hours apart. The first at the Walkie Talkie Building saw Harris impressively dip under the coveted five-minute mark.
His second victory was at Broadgate Tower, where he set a new PB of 4.55, beating Slovakia’s Patrik Schneidgen in the process.
Having traveled to high-profile races around the world multiple times, including La Verticale de la Tour Eiffel in March, Harris is no stranger to elite-level international competition.
The Briton is all too aware of the vastly different challenge posed by Taipei 101, compared with UK towers.
David Harris at the finish line of La Verticale de la Tour Eiffel 2018
‘[The Taipei 101 Run Up 2017] was without doubt the toughest stair race I’d done at that point. I definitely went out too fast and remember getting to around floor 30 feeling pretty awful and thinking “I’ve still got 60 odd floors to go!”
‘In terms of goals for this race, my primary aim is to beat my time from 2017. The male field is undoubtedly one of the highest quality fields ever assembled, as you’d expect for a world champs. As such to even get near to the top 30 would be a massive achievement for me. Being familiar with the fabled steepness of the course will hopefully help. The ‘sprint’ race will add a different dynamic, though,’ said Harris.
‘I’ll be giving it my best shot and will be leaving it all in the stairwell. I’m looking forward to the event hugely and aim to enjoy every painful minute!’
Shakespeare ready for ‘a hard race’
Alongside Harris, Sonja Shakespeare has the most international race experience of all UK tower runners, including runs this year at Rondo 1 in Warsaw and the Eiffel Tower.
And like her GB team mate, she has had an excellent start to the domestic season; two wins, at the Beetham Tower Run in February and the Broadgate Tower in March, plus three second-place finishes at St George’s Tower in Leicester and the Walkie Talkie and Leadenhall Buildings in the City of London.
But the course record-holder for London’s Gherkin Building admits to feeling ‘nervous’ ahead of her World Championship debut. Why?
‘Mainly because I’ve heard how hard this race is. All stair races are hard so it’s difficult to gauge what ‘hard’ is. But when a number of top stair runners tell you ‘it’s a hard race’, I feel I need to respect this one,’ Shakespeare said.
‘As a result my training has stepped up this year ready for this race but the last two weeks I have been focused more on recovery due to an ankle and calf injury.’
‘Today I’m as ready as I can be so I’m really looking forward to the race tomorrow morning. Having a short race first will be a good test of my fitness before the long race.
My individual goal is to make it to the top knowing I’ve given all I have. There is a good quality field racing so I have no expectations of a finishing position, but my finishing time will only be a consequence of my hard work.’
Tower Running UK 