GIANT STEPS STAIRWAY TO HELL STEPPING UP TO THE DVE N T A U CHALLENGE OF 11,674 STEPS E R H E ON THE RAILS T Duncan Craig hits RISING PRECIPITOUSLY the 10,000-step mark – and hits it hard. Not far to go… I S S U E TO THE SUMMIT OF A SWISS MOUNTAIN, DUNCAN CRAIG TACKLES EUROPE’S CRAZIEST RACE AND INVESTIGATES THE GROWING APPEAL OF STAIR RUNNING ● Basic race etiquette was one of the earliest casualties. The organisers had been quite clear – should we become aware of someone trying to pass us on the single-file steps during our interminable ascent, the would-be overtaker should say ‘treppe’ (‘stairway’ in Swiss-German) and we should step aside. But there’s something about being in the red zone – deeper in the red zone, in fact, that you’ve ever been – that relegates basic manners to the most inconsequential of matters. Survival instincts kick in and you become a selfish bugger. Or at least I did – ignoring pleas from behind, sticking to my line, forcing overtakers to brave the steeply sloping, chute-like channel that separates the steps from the funicular tracks. There was no way I was surrendering even the faintest sliver of momentum. When you have thousands of steps still ahead of you, such things take on an absurd importance. The Niesen-Treppen-Lauf (Niesenbahn stair race) had captivated me since I first read of it a decade ago. The Niesenbahn funicular railway is one of the Alps’ most accomplished engineering feats. Extending up the Tobleronic slopes of Mount Niesen, in Switzerland’s Bernese-Oberland, it cuts a neat swathe through the forested foothills and clings, stiff-fingeredly, to the barren upper slopes like a freeclimber. But it was not so much this engineering marvel that interested me, as what ran alongside it, as a contingency for an emergency evacuation of the railway: the world’s longest staircase – a flight of 11,674 steps. 046 RUNNERSWORLD.CO.UK JUNE 2018 JUNE 2018 RUNNERSWORLD.CO.UK 047 GIANT STEPS all the time. There’s a growing scene in India, China, Hong Kong.’ MY LEGS ARE STRONG AND MY Gallagher did his first race, at the Gherkin in London, in 2013. Instantly hooked, he then tackled the Heron Tower and Tower 42, the Spinnaker, the BREATHING IS REGULAR, AND Empire State Building and a string of others. He’s an ultramarathoner but he’s yet to find anything that comes close to the physical and mental THE MORNING SUN HAS JUST torment of a stair race: ‘I really like the honesty of the sport. There’s no fooling the stairs: you try to take it easy but the stairs won’t let you. In other CREPT OVER THE MOUNTAIN races, there are times when you can cruise a bit, but this isn’t possible in stair running.’ Many stair runners trumpet the crossover Just imagine trying to run up it, was my first thought. My second, to Google benefits. Quads, glutes and core are all just that. And, sure enough, since 1990 – but with a 13-year hiatus as it changed its strengthened, lactate thresholds increased and focus from a small group of niche professional endurance athletes to a larger field utilising the handrail to help pull yourself up (a bona of amateur loons – there’s been a race. Once a year, the railway comes to a standstill fide technique that the pros spend years honing) until 10am to allow a field of 300 or so to subject themselves to untold suffering in provides a full-body workout. Bad weather is no idyllic surroundings. The rewards? Prestige and a few spectacularly unglamorous barrier to training on your nearest stairwell and prizes (Odor-Eaters stood out here). The race is a vertical mile – you run from the its quick-hit-return equation is another plus in our 693m valley floor to the 2,362m summit – the incline approaches 70 per cent in time-starved times; if you’re prepared to embrace places and nearly all the competitors are local. It was an impossibly seductive mix. the pain, results are pretty much guaranteed. Arriving at Mülenen, the village at the foot of the mountain from where the ‘I took about four minutes off my 5K after six weeks funicular begins, at 6:20am on race day, I find an atmosphere similar to any mid- of just stair running,’ says Gallagher. size parochial race. Names are being taken; numbers pinned; timing chips adjusted; Then there’s the lack of impact. As any runner gels stored; stretching routines flirted with. The race organisers keep up a crackly knows, the attrition rate of churning out dozens monologue of instructions, struggling to be heard over the sound of the surging of miles a week can be high and the consequent meltwater river we’ll immediately cross when the race gets under way. injuries are spirit-sapping. But on the stairs, while As with every stair race, a mass start is impossible. At the Niesenbahn, it’s organised into pulses of two runners every 20 seconds, with the best stacked towards the final slots. Most seem to be runners rather than step specialists, though there’s a conspicuous glut of rippling quads on show. Advice varies. There is little consensus on the number of steps to take in one go: some say one; others are adamant it should be two; one even suggests three – the strategy employed by Colombian Francisco Ten of the world’s most gruelling Sanchez, who won the 1991 race in a record time of 52:22. In 2004, it was decided stair races. Tempted? to end the race at the Niesen summit, rather than the last step, adding 250m to the distance. The record for the new course, set in 2011 by Emmanuel Vaudan, is 55:55. 12,000 Step tactics may differ but everyone is in agreement about one thing: don’t go ● Niesen-Treppen-Lauf off too hard. I don’t need to be told. At my first step race, the inaugural Spinnaker Switzerland – 11,674 steps Tower run in Portsmouth six years ago, I went off like the clappers, completed the EARLY RISERS the cardiovascular system may be stretched to breaking point, your joints enjoy ● (top to bottom): Almost a vertical mile from final few floors on my hands and knees, and spent 20 minutes dry-retching in the Shanghai Tower something close to a free ride. ‘I was very injury-prone as a track athlete,’ says toilets at the finish. Chastened, I ran the Empire State Building (ESB) Run-Up six Shanghai – 3,398 steps the valley floor; the course featured a series Suzy Walsham, stair-running ‘galactico’ and multiple winner of the rival world of covered sections; on top of the world months later listening to classical music, with my heart rate hardly deviating from championships staged by the Towerrunning World Association (TWA) and the 150bpm. That had been encouraging – but that race’s 1,576 steps were a little more ● One World Trade Center Vertical World Circuit (VWC). ‘But stairs being non-impact means I don’t get injured than a seventh of what I’m about to tackle. New York – 2,226 steps at all. In fact, I can still train and race even when I’m carrying injuries that prevent Am I prepared? Difficult to say. My training has been improvised, at best, built on me from running.’ At 44, Suzy is lean, bursting with vitality and seemingly getting three central pillars: strapping myself to the gym’s Versaclimber until my quads and ● Rose Bowl better with every race. She runs an estimated 200,000 steps a year and shows no glutes groaned and the cleaners moaned at the puddle of sweat; tackling as many 8,000 Pasadena – 2,128 steps signs of slowing down. The former Commonwealth Games 800m and 1500m runner hills as possible on my road bike; and hitting the stairwell at work. Hard. is convinced that such longevity would not be possible in more conventional racing. ● International Conference Centre ON THE UP Hong Kong – 2,120 steps NEVER-ENDING STOREYS If I’d been looking for evidence of stair-running’s growth in the years since I nearly Back at the Niesenbahn, those Odor-Eaters won’t win themselves. My number redecorated the Spinnaker Tower, it came in the response of those colleagues who ● Willis Tower – siebenundsiebzig (77) – is called and I and my randomly assigned race buddy caught me in the act. Six years ago, I might as well have been openly urinating in my Chicago – 2,115 steps (CamelBak, neat Germanic glasses, hair as white as his knee-high socks) are ushered chosen training stairwell, such were the looks of bewildered indignation. But this through the door of the base station and towards an electronic counter. This works time round, there was altogether more understanding; all seemed to have heard of ● down from 20 seconds, during which we share a handshake, and then the starter’s 4,000 Menara Tower stair running, and a few had even tackled one of the UK’s growing number of races Kuala Lumpur – 2,058 steps arm goes down and we’re trundling over the river on the elevated steel walkway. such as London’s Tower 42 or the Christie Tower Run in Manchester. ‘Don’t go off too hard.’ The mantra repeats in my mind as I slip into a cautious There is empirical data, too. The Towerrunning World Association, the sport’s ● Taipei 101 early pace, aided by the walkway ramping up alarmingly, like a reverse ski jump.