Vertical Rush: The UK’s first tower running race
Have I got everything? Trainers – check. The Rocky theme tune set to repeat on my iPod – check. That seems to be all the specialist equipment I need for my first introduction to the sport of tower running …
I’d remembered reading an article about stair-climbing competitions, though the details were hazy, when I walked past a poster in Bank tube station a couple of weeks ago. It was advertising the inaugural Vertical Rush event, the opportunity to climb the City’s tallest skyscraper, Tower 42, as a fundraiser for the housing and homelessness charity Shelter. That was enough for me: I had entered within minutes.
How hard could it be? I am young, keen and quite fit. It is just climbing stairs, and I do that every day. Then I got round to rereading that article. One quotation really stuck out: “Tower runners love to relate stories of elite marathon runners who assume they’ll cruise to the top, only to drop out in a crumpled heap on the 43rd floor.” Still, I am not an elite marathon runner and Tower 42 only has 42 floors, so I figured that I would be fine.
The competitors congregated outside Tower 42 on a fresh spring morning, eyeing each other nervously. A TV crew interviewed an attractive young blonde; I waited for my turn on camera before realising that she was a celebrity and the camera crew was unlikely to be interested in me. After another wait by the entrance to the lifts, we ambled slowly towards the bottom of the fire escape. And then we were off.
The climb itself was tough. The view on the way up was as uninspiring as you would imagine the inside of a fire escape to be: concrete and steel. My legs felt fine to start with, but what surprised me was the burning sensation in my lungs, starting around floor 12. Maybe the hundreds of other competitors had used all of my oxygen?
Every so often there was a marker on the wall – surely I wasn’t only at floor 25? I started to use the banister, yanking myself up with my arms to help out my failing legs. It may only have been a 10-minute climb, but by the time I reached floor 42, it felt like I was breathing in fumes piped directly from a Routemaster’s exhaust pipe. I wobbled over the finish line as waves of nausea washed over me, just about able to admire the fantastic view.
I haven’t got my official time yet, but I can safely say I didn’t win. But two good things came out of the day. One is all the money raised for Shelter: an incredible £100,000. It is a fantastic cause and, as someone who works in the financial services industry, it is good to know that someone will look out for me should I fall on hard times. The other, slightly surreal, moment came at about floor 30, when I overtook a runner who I later learned was Tempest, one of Sky’s Gladiators. They are human after all.
Nevertheless, my quest for excellence via minority sports has been thwarted again. I have always liked to believe that I am the best in the world at something – the only problem is that I don’t know what. My life has been spent trying to seek out my talent, my islet of ability. Every pastime I try for the first time could end up being the one. The trouble is, I’m running out of pastimes.
The problem is popularity. I’m never going to be the best rugby player or Sudoku champion, because the competition is simply too intense. The important thing is to try to choose an obscure competition; one that so few enter, I am in with a chance.
Yet even minority sports seem to attract stiff competition. I remember reading the results of the 2004 Cooper’s Hill Cheese Rolling festival. Winners included Marc Ellis (the former All Black rugby player) and a 20-year-old Gurkha. What chance would the average athlete have? I even head of someone training for this stair climb by running up ‘down’ escalators.
I nearly lived my dream once. I entered the UK’s first speed-eating contest to be sanctioned by the International Federation of Competitive Eating. Not many other people did, so I came second.
Suggestions as to my next challenge are welcome. Just don’t tell too many other people about it.
• Andy Kocen realises that second place is the first loser. He writes at reluctant-runner-2009.blogspot.com
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